The Ghost Of What Had Been
by vintagegirl
Summary: It's been 3 years since Wyatt was prohibited from seeing his true love. Now her friend has been killed by a demon and he won't sit back and watch her die too. Of course, time changes everything if not everyone...
1. Why Did We Ever Meet

I DON'T OWNED CHARMED. I JUST WRITE STORIES BASED OFF OF IT.

THIS IS THE FUTURE WHERE WYATT AND CHRIS ARE BOTH GOOD AND TRYING TO DEAL WITH THEIR LIVES. OF COURSE, IT IS NEVER EASY SINCE THEY ARE CHARMED.

Wyatt felt like an idiot as he stood in her driveway. He looked up at the house she had been living in for the past three years. It had been three years since they had been together. Three years since he had last kissed her and three years since he'd thought about the way they had been so good together. He had hated to admit that getting over her had never really happened.

Brooke Glenview had been his first love and no one could take the memory of her away from him. Not even the Elders who had despised them being together the whole time. 'Humans can't be with twice blessed beings' had been the Elders tagline ever since Brooke and he had started dating. It was the rule they had said.

He had never understood the rule since in the beginning of it all his own mother and father had been forbidden from each other yet look at them now.

They were both in love and happy and together still. They had had two kids. Himself and his little annoyingly neurotic at times brother, Chris. They had married and been together and had children happily and no harm had come to the oblivious world because of it.

Yet he couldn't love one human girl? He found something very, very wrong with that.

At the time, his mother had said the Elders were a bunch of passive aggressives that got their kicks on hurting them but sometimes they really did have their reasons. He had never gotten a real response when he had asked her what was one of them, but he knew they had to have some reason for this whether or not his own parents would tell him about it was another thing. Yet in the end his mother had changed her mind about the Elders being wrong when it came to Brooke and him ebbing in love.

His father and his mother had not told him what information that they had had that had changed his mother's whole point of view on the Elders. They had just agreed with them after awhile. Wyatt, himself, still didn't understand it.

His mother had once said it would be easier if he and Brooke weren't together. She had said that they were too young to be together always. They had been fifteen at the time. He hadn't wanted to marry her or anything that intense so he had never understood the deep scrutiny placed on him being in love with a human had sparked amongst his family as well as the Elders.

His mother had once even give him 'the talk' about it. She had said that what the Elders probably didn't want to deal with were the very humanistic repercussions that would be involved with them the whole time they were together.

She had meant that if Brooke had ever become pregnant it wouldn't be a normal child. The baby might even have a protective shield while still was in the womb. How would he explain that? How did he expect to live a normal life with Brooke when he himself was extraordinary? The Elders worried that since the girl was human she wouldn't be able to protect herself from the oncoming demon attacks that were a given fro Wyatt and his family. Hence, he would always worry over her whenever something happened because she would become his first priority since she was human and powerless and easily breakable.

The Elders had said that if he was worried over her mortality every time that they had a demon around or an innocent to save he would never get anything done. They had even said that the intensity of his feelings would make the situation around any of the innocents even worse. Hell, they had even been adamant on the factor that if she were ever to die it would hurt the whole universe because he might not be able to recover from the guilt of losing her as well as mourning her.

He had loved her though. For him to be fifteen years old, in love, and happy for once in his life with his own best friend, and then taken to the very Elders who had opposed his mother and fathers union just so that they could have a little conference about his own love and sex life wasn't the best thing on earth.

He had actually had to go up there and listen to them try to explain to him why they so desperately wanted him to be unhappy. In their terms they so desperately wanted him to find an equal. They had even gone to the point of saying that if their relationship continued in the future it would destroy the nature of the world. They had even blamed him for the world being destroyed even though he didn't know why him loving one human girl could cause that.

Then, Brooke's mother had died on top of it all. At first, Wyatt had thought that it was the Elders taking out their revenge on him through hurting her because as soon as the meeting had been over he had orbed right to her house and been with her the rest of the day.

He had never understood why the Elders expected him to just throw his life away so that the world would keep spinning on its axis. Especially when they never did anything about it themselves. They were hypocritical fools who just waited forever to find out the outcome of things.

The greater good his ass. The greater good would have kept him and his family incredibly happy, wealthy, and lucky in life as well as love after everything they had had to sacrifice for the greater good.

But no. Of course not, he had had to lose the one person who had mattered to him most. Sure, there had been other girls. There had to be other girls there so he could get over her after her father had packed up their home and went to Sacramento. Getting over her had never really happened though.

Now, here he was standing in her vacant driveway and staring at her new house. He hadn't seen her in person in years. He had constantly been involved in her dreams the first year. He hadn't cared that the Elders had prohibited the action. He still had found a way around them. He had went to her in her dreams and had talked with her so that she could have some closure over something if she couldn't have any closure over almost anything else. He had set her dreams up like it was all really happening in real life and they had been together that way. He had helped her through moving to a new city as well as to get through mourning her mother.

He had been there for her to help her through it all. In the end, he had never gotten over her because of it.

He didn't care what the Elders said she was the right girl in his book. He wondered if she would remember him when he knocked on her front door. He wondered if she would smile at him or hug him or just have a hard time remembering him.

He wondered how she would take seeing him all over again because right now he didn't know if he was going to make it. He wanted to orb into her room and kiss her and tell her life would be better soon. He wanted to save her like he had before.

He had tried to enter her dreams. Ever since he had found out what she was going through now he had tried and yet he had been prohibited from them now. He didn't know if that was because of him or the Elders had figured out what he had been doing over the years.

He didn't know why, but he had not been able to get through to her again. Instead, he had just kept running into a black wall. He couldn't get in to see how she was doing and he couldn't see her. So, he began to worry about her.

He wondered if she looked the same.

Last time he had seen her she had had a short bob of dark chestnut brown hair and warm honey brown colored eyes. He wondered if that when she smiled her eyes still lit up and then if she still half covered her mouth with her hand shyly while she smiled. He wondered if she was still the same unique and kind girl he had fallen for years ago.

He wondered above all if she remembered him.

He wondered if she still thought of him once in a great while. If she ever thought of calling him and rekindling something or maybe she was too shy to do it. He wondered if she had moved on and had someone else in her life or if she was just stayed single. He wondered if she felt the same way about him still as he did for her.

Wyatt walked up the smooth black paved driveway to the three story red bricked house. The windows were blackly shuttered and there were no lights on in the house. Her front porch light was slowly losing its pulse as it flickered in the dusk. She had always left that on. She had always left it on for her mother when her mother had been alive so that she would be able to get in the house easier once she got off of the late shift at the hospital.

Brooke still did that. Did she still do the other things he remembered her so well doing? He remembered her every time his mother lit a vanilla scented incense in the house to cast a spell.

Brooke had used to be addicted to the smell of vanilla. Her mother had gotten her into it and she had all the lotions and incense and everything. She had always smelled of v vanilla. Sometimes when she had been over and she had borrowed his bigger sweaters because she always was cold because he had always believed she had been born with a cold chill. She especially was cold in his old drafty house and after she had borrowed his sweaters to wear to keep her warm while she was there he would smell the shirt later on and he could still smell her in it.

Chris had made fun of both of them being the happy love birds of the century. He had always followed them around and hung out with them. Whenever they had tried to kiss or hug Chris would just get all disgusted since he still hadn't gotten out of his whole 'girls are evil' stage. Sometimes he wondered if his mother had sent Chris with them everywhere they went since he was like the walking talking interactive version of a contraceptive.

It had been weird when she had stopped living around them. The house had been quieter and she just had left her ghost haunting them all in every room she had ever been in. Even Chris, who had barely ever admitted to liking Brooke, had been slightly depressed once she had gone.

She had been the first person that had been nice to Chris that he had ever brought over to their house. She had given Chris things like c. d 's she'd burn for him of songs she thought were like him and songs he liked that he didn't have money to buy the c.d. for or else she would hang out with him whenever Wyatt had had to go off and save the world.

They had entertained each other whenever that happened. Wyatt had never let her know what he really had been doing and sure the Elders were right because every once in awhile things had happened that he couldn't explain. There had been a lot of close calls to while she was there waiting for him to get whatever fake chore he had told her he had to do done.

Once, he had been almost brutally butchered at a tug of war with a demon that had gotten a hold of a vanquishing potion that would have taken it out in minutes. It had been flung right at Chris and her. It had landed a few feet away and she had just picked it up gave a weird look and kicked it back in the direction it had come from. Just in time too because Wyatt had been able to snatch it right up and he'd used it on the godforsaken demon.

Lots and lots of close calls.

She either was a really good at not caring about the weird things all over his house or else she was a great actress when it came to things like that. He had had so many different excuses for why he had to not see her or cancel plans. Sometimes he had had to vanquish demons at the same time she was in the house.

It had never been the most fun thing to have to kill a demon while worrying about the family secret getting out to the one person I didn't know how would take it.

It was times like those he was happy that Chris would keep her company while he helped vanquish all the evil that continuously attacked his family.

Now, here he was.

He was here because of the very thing he had always been trying to hide from her. His greatest secret that he was a twice blessed magical being that had a very big clue to who had brutally murdered her best friend.

She had been there at the time her friend had been murdered. She had said she was upstairs while it had happened. The police had been suspicious about her alibi but everything in her story linked up right and the evidence even had pointed at someone stronger, and someone who had forced entry into the house.

Her friend had been brutally murdered by a demon. So, Wyatt had tried to get into her dreams to see how she was holding up. Of course the wall had blocked him out so he was here now to see how she was in person. Wyatt had come without telling his family where he was going and why and who he was seeing.

He had just came here.

He needed to help her. He had this feeling that she was over her head in this. He had a feeling that that demon would be back for her. He also had a nagging feeling that she had lied to the police about not seeing what had happened to her best friend.

She had said something that had verified that factor too. Something was telling him that she was trying to sneak around the truth when it had come to the whole death of her friend and he wanted to know why. She had said something that he had taken quite literally that the police had probably overlooked in the hysteria of the moment.

She had said 'a murdering bastard of a demon came into my house and killed my best friend. How do you think I feel, lieutenant?' when the police had asked her where she was. She had been there and she had witnessed her own friends death. He had a feeling that she was tying to lie to the police for more then one reason about it.

The police would never even believe her telling them some strange abnormal demon came and killed her friend. He had a feeling that was why she hadn't said anything to them about what really had happened. He would believe her though. He had been working with evil greedy killing monsters forever and he was here to try to help her out.

He hoped.


	2. Here I Go Falling In Love Again

Wyatt stepped up onto the porch and rang the doorbell. He had a feeling no one was there but he had to make sure. He was so nervous. He had never been nervous in his life and here he was standing on the very doorstep of his first love. He wanted to see her now more then ever but he didn't know what to say.

What if he screwed this up. What if he said something stupid and she just shut the door in his face. He didn't even know if she was the same person anymore. He didn't even know quite for sure if she was really still living here after what had happened to her friend.

If she wasn't here he didn't really know where she would be. He couldn't quite scry for her either because once you did that at the house everyone joined on the band wagon. He couldn't let anyone really know what was going on. He didn't need them to know anything about what was happening.

Hell, they wouldn't be happy about it either. His mother would think he had gone crazy brining up his old ex, ex, ex, girlfriend from the beginning of the line of other girlfriends. Then there was the small fact that she would most definitely bring up Allie. Who was his girlfriend at the moment.

He liked Allie. He didn't love her though. He had nothing really between her like he had had between Brooke. He still couldn't believe the Elders would just make up a rule against them being together.

It almost made him wonder why they would do something like that.

He almost wondered if they saw a future that had been destroyed because he had loved her. Then, he wondered what kind of future was left now? What future did they see with him unhappy and not being able to get over his first love.

He was like a ghost trapped in Limbo. Even the girls he had liked had never made it close to his heart. No one could replace her.

Then, he knew his father would instantly find out. His mother would yell up to the heavens to get his Elder dad's ass back down to them. She would go spastic and tell his father about what he had had in mind and then Leo would go into his 'I know how you feel, son. I love you, son, but the rules are meant for a purpose' crap because he had to.

His dad was an Elder so when he had told Wyatt that he was forbidden by the very Elders to be with Brooke it had been a betrayal.

His father hadn't explained why. His father had just told him to do it at the time. His father had to go along with them. It was his father's job Wyatt knew that , but screw his job! Wyatt was his oldest son and he had expected his father to at least stand up to the Elders on his behalf. Especially after his parents had started the whole thing by having him.

Wyatt let it go. He wasn't going to dwell on it again. Not now when he was here. There was nothing the Elders could do about it now. He had cast a spell that would last at least three hours that would block his presence from them so they wouldn't know what he was doing or what he was up to.

He knew he had decided to play with fire here on that one but this was important the Elders had killed off Brooke's mom to get her to move away from him and now they had let some demon brutally murder her friend in front of her. She deserved some protection and he was going to give it to her.

Whether the Elders liked it or not.

Wyatt looked around the porch and watched a spider in a nearby web. She wasn't answering. She wasn't home. He had come for nothing. He wasn't going to see her now.

He slowly took a step off the steps, plunged his hands deep in his blue jeaned pockets, and looked up a the house mournfully. He wanted to see her so much. He had been thinking the whole time he'd been there or on his way there that he would. Everything he had done that day had lead up to the moment where she came to the door and opened it to him.

He had even pictured the ways she would accept him into her life.

So far there were only a two as of now. They were both the two different extremes that could happen between them.

The first was that Brooke would open the door. She wouldn't be exactly paying attention to him while she did and she would still be sad and teary eyed from losing her friend. She would look at him with those endlessly beautiful honey brown eyes and then she would recognize him.

She would step forward to the screen to make sure he was really in front of her as all the memories he had been fighting with all day sparked through her own mind. Then, she would open her door to him and let him enter the house as she held him close to her in a long hug.

The second was that Brooke wouldn't know who he was. She would look at him and not know at all why this stranger was on her doorstep. Then she would ask who he was. He would tell her and she still wouldn't know him from Adam. Then, in his most extreme thoughts she would bring out a rifle and threaten him off of her property before she blew his brains out.

He only hoped that the first was more likely to come true than the last.

Wyatt sighed and looked at the black paved driveway. He wondered if it had been hard for her to move away from him. He wondered if it had been easier to start over in a new place. He knew he would never get the chance to start anew. So here he was in front of her house feeling stupid and not going anywhere.

He had expected to at least see her. He had never thought of the possibility of her not being there. He had just been so overwhelmed knowing he was going to see her again that that idea had never popped into his mind. He had even dredged up the old shirt she had always loved him wearing.

He still fit into it. He had worn it. He had thought maybe she would recognize that shirt if not him.

Wyatt pursed his lips together and stared up at the dark house. The sun had set and now there were shadows guiding the lines of the sky over the house everywhere. He wondered which room was hers. He wondered if she still had the purple elephant he had bought her when they had went to the fair on their first date.

He had been so stupid to think he would see her again.

He had just been so stuck in believing nothing would have changed and she would just come back into his life like nothing at all had kept them apart in the first place. What an idiot he had been.

He was about to leave when he heard a soft voice floating in the air to him. It was coming from her backyard. He instantly took action and moved in that direction hoping she was there and he hadn't done this all for nothing.

He didn't have to go far. He opened a wooden red door to the backyard that should have been locked but wasn't. Then, he slowly moved through the shadows as he went to see who it was that was there.

He felt like Romeo in the balcony scene. He felt stupid, and nervous. He felt as if everything weighed on this moment in time. He felt awkward for once in a lifetime to know he would see her again now and not know how to explain who he was, what he could do for her, or even why he had not come after her after so much time had past.

He saw a dark figure in the shadows moving around the lit up green water filled pool. The rippling water was the only sound over a few spoken words that came to him. She was on her cell phone. She sounded so tired as she spoke.

"Oh, thank you. No, I am fine. Don't come home earlier, daddy. I will be fine. Don't worry I can protect myself," she said into the phone.

He still didn't see her face but the voice he knew well. He stood in awe at finding her as he watched her move. She finally plopped down on a chair a few feet away from him on the side of the pool. He still couldn't she her fully at all in the dark, but he could tell by her voice that it was her.

"Alright. Get back to work already." she laughed into the phone.

A moment past and then goodbyes were said. She listened into the phone for a few more moments. He knew it was time to come out of the shadows and show himself instead of feeling like a stalker. Before he could though someone else joined them in the pool area.

Right behind her resting form someone shimmered in. Instantly, Wyatt was on the defense as he saw the person take form.

Brooke sighed and dropped the cell onto a towel obliviously and rolled her head on her shoulders trying to relieve stress. She didn't even realize there was someone else there.

She was completely defenseless.

Wyatt didn't know what to do. If he showed himself she wouldn't trust him. Then, she would be distracted as well as he from the evil who had just shimmered in behind her. Before he could move though the attacker came into the light.

The man had dark hair and bright blue eyes. He wore all black in the evil trademark way and in his hands rested a bow and arrow that he had trained on her back.

A dark lighter had just entered their reunion.


	3. Standing At The Edge Of The World

The man who had just shimmered in had dark hair and bright blue eyes. He wore all black in the evil trademark way and in his hands rested a bow and arrow that he had trained on her back.

A dark lighter had just entered their reunion.

The dark lighter drew himself more into the porch lights for the pool where Wyatt could see the determination written over his face. Whatever he was there to do he wasn't going to leave without doing it. Whatever it was Wyatt knew it was directly related to his girl and he wouldn't let him do it.

The whole time the dark lighter had not let his bow and arrow lose its train on her.

Brooke, as if sensing someone else there with her, slowly turned her head. Wyatt wanted to move, but he couldn't. He didn't know what to do. He didn't expect her to trust him if he did save her. So he waited to see what was going to happen. Deep down his instincts were holding him back from them for some reason and here he was stuck watching them.

Brooke quickly jumped out of her chair making it fall in her quick action. Wyatt went into a stance knowing she had been surprised by this evil. There was a moment of no action and no spoken words between the two. They both stood watching each other to see what the other was going to do.

Wyatt knew the dark lighter could do anything. Brooke couldn't. She had no magic and she was human. She couldn't save herself from magic either. Wyatt barely knew sometimes if he could save himself from dark lighters.

Then, he saw a smile spread over her face as she tilted her head at the dark lighter. Then, she did the least expected thing he would never have thought she would do. Brooke rushed right over to the dark lighter and wrapped her arms around him.

His bow and arrow disappeared before she even reached him so she wasn't at all harmed by it. He wrapped his arms around her in a mirror reaction as they held onto each other for what seemed like dear life.

Wyatt gaped at them in the darkness.

The girl he had once loved was with a dark lighter! She was with his worst enemy and his possible destroyer since dark lighters were there for the evil side to take out as many white lighters as they possibly could.

Wyatt felt like rubbing his eyes. He wanted to pinch himself. He wanted to wake himself up from this nightmare. Not in his wildest dreams had he expected to reunite with the girl of his dreams in living real world form to find her in the arms of a dark lighter.

Brooke was holding onto the dark lighter as if he was her strength. She had done that with Wyatt once a long time ago. She had held onto him so hard when she had lost her mother and her father had decided to pick up the pieces and move on. He could almost remember that like it was yesterday.

He could see her pulling the heavy oak wood front door to her old house open. She revealed herself to him with red sore eyes and her honey brown colored bob was messy. Her topaz colored eyes looked at him helplessly lost and hurt as he had tried to smile at her warmly

He had went to her house moments after his father had told him the news. His father had said it was all for the best and that this was the moment that set everything in motion but he didn't believe him. He hated his father for just letting the Elders off her mother so that destiny would be handed down to her. Especially , when that very destiny would make her have to leave him behind.

She had on an oversized gray sweater that was falling off of her one shoulder to reveal her pale skinned shoulder to him. She was beautiful in her disarray. She was more beautiful to him in that moment then she had ever been to him before.

She had been biting her lip to keep form letting herself cry all over again and she had her hand holding onto her elbow.

When she had saw him the tears had just started falling without her permission. Wyatt had instantly came into her house. No one had been there at the time. They had had it all to themselves. He had came into the house nervously trying to figure out wha to say that wouldn't come out sounding like he knew why her mother had died and hated life for it. Without letting his secret out to her.

He didn't get the chance to speak. As soon as he had come in he had kicked his hsoes off as she had started walking through the narrow hallway into the house. He had thrown his jacket on the cahri beside the door and followed her in. They hadn't made it far before she had turned around to him.

Her eyes had changed to a deep topaz brown color he had never seen before. The intensity in them had made him stop in thought. She had just looed at his eys for a moment. Then. She had came straight into his eyes and held him as hard as she could.

When that wasn't enough comfort for her ot forget or feel better by she had pulled her head away form his shoulders to meet his eys yet again. The connection between them that he had always felt wrapped wires of electricity through their bodies as she stared into his ocean blue eyes.

"Brooke," he had whispered tryign to think of soethign to say. Trying to remember fully why had had come in te first palce.

Nothing came as she looked into his eyes. Her eyes turned down to look at his lips and then she had smiled up at him. A kiss.

She smiled at him through the flooding tears and then she started to kiss him as deeply as she could. He had felt like he was going under in a riptide as she did. She was the best kisser he had ever kissed in his life. Sometiems he thought tht if she needed to all she had to do was iss someone in order to save herself from dying.

As they kissed she had started to pull at his dark green t-shirt. He knew then what hse wanted and he wanted it to. The shirt came off of him. It plied them apart form each other for a moment in order to get the shirt off and then they had been pulled straight back into each other as the kisses started to lead into more things then he had expected.

She had been his first.

He swallowed hard as jealousy ripped over him as he saw them hold onto echo other. He didn't doubt that she had done all the things with him she was doing with the dark lighter now.

Now, things had started to make sense.

That was why he hadn't been able to get through to her in her dreams as easily as he had before. She had put a wall up against him because he wasn't apart of her world anymore. She had evidently moved on from him.

Now, she was with a dark lighter.

He had to admit in his dark humor that he thought in extremes about how things would happen. However, Brooke lived in extremes. She seemed to love in extremes too since her first boyfriend she had ever had had been one of the twice-blessed Charmed Ones sons that was set to be one of the most powerful magical beings in the world.

Now, though, she loved a dark lighter who happened to be an evil murderer of dozens of white lighters per day and possibly had a very dark past that Wyatt was planning on getting home and studying up on.

Somehow though she was still inside the world of magic. Only now she was with the evil side since she was in love with a dark lighter. Maybe, she had changed more then he thought she would.

Maybe, this was what the Elders had referred to. Maybe, this was why she had to not be in his life since she seemed to be with a dark lighter now. Maybe, she leaned more towards the evil side then the good one. Maybe she and the dark lighter were meant for each and Wyatt was just one of her boyfriends that lead up to him.

He was surprised. He was in denial. He was in every emotion he ever had felt at the moment.

Mostly, he felt like an idiot. He had thought she had needed him. Even after the wall that had been in place against him entering her dreams, he had still thought she needed him to get her through this.

He had just been stupid. She didn't need him to comfort her. She didn't need him in her life. She didn't need him at all. She seemed to be taken care of by someone else right at the present moment.

He had been a fool to believe she needed him after all these years.

Then he felt betrayed. She was with a dark lighter. He had never been able to get over her and he had helped her get over him and helped her mourn her own mother yet here she was. She was with a dark lighter. Someone who could easily kill him and had killed many other white lighters in his time and she was with him.

How could she do that? How could she just be with someone evil?

Especially, when he knew that she was good. Or at least, she had been good. The last time he had seen her she had been good. Now, he didn't know anymore. It was like the world had turned upside down on him or something.

She was in love with a dark lighter. Which meant she had some magical knowledge now that she hadn't had when they had been together. At least if he ever still decided to tell her who he really was she wouldn't think he was crazy or run away screaming from him.

At least he knew that would work out better then the two extremes he had imagined.

But here she was with a dark lighter. Of all people for her to be with why someone that was evil?

Had he corrupted her? Had he placed a spell on her once he'd fallen for her? It was known to happen all the time. Wyatt wanted to believe that the dark lighter had done that and now he could save her from him.

Yeah, that could be it. The girl that he had loved before he knew would never have fallen for a dark lighter.

So this was all the dark lighters fault. He must of somehow placed a spell on her to make her love him. That was why Wyatt had been attracted to her all voe rthe years. He had to save her from evil. Maybe, the Elders had just wanted to separate them to see if they could withstand time apart and so that he would come upon her with a dark lighter and destroy the dark lighter before he did anymore damage.

Yeah, that had to be it, right?


	4. Get It Faster

Brooke held onto Conrad as hard as she could. It had been the day from hell. She had been constantly regarded as being a criminal for having been in the same house at the same time as the murder of her best friend and not saving her friends life by the community. The police saw her that way also but they had no incriminating evidence to pull on her so she was home free for the time being.

She knew they would not have any real evidence ever. A demon had done it and she couldn't be linked to a demon. Police would never believe a demon had broken into her home while and killed her friend brutally. Police didn't believe in the supernatural so why would they believe in the very thing that had killed her friend?

What she couldn't do was tell anyone why she hadn't been able to save her friend.

She hated everyone for thinking this was her fault.

Everyone had called to give her their sympathies. Deep down. She knew they were talking about her behind their backs. Her family blamed her for her friends death since she had probably killed her or else had a friend do it since Brooke was such a bad seed. Her won friends probably were devising strange plots of how and why Glory had died. They would never tell her this because she knew most of those plots had been devised making her the murderer.

Glory had been her friends. She had been the only person who had been there for her since the first moment she had moved in next door to her. They had been instant friends since that moment. Glory had helped her move her boxes into her room for Christ's sake and ever since then they had been inseparable. Until now of course, since they could no longer be friends anymore since Glory was dead and Brooke was still at the moment very much alive.

But, of course, Brooke knew a few ways to cheat Death and that was what she was planning on doing. Of course, if Death did happen to find her she had said all her goodbyes already and she had prepared for this . Everyone she had ever loved knew how she felt. If for some unmistakable reason she wound up dead by sunrise tomorrow morning no one would even really care.

She had been the bad seed in the friendship between her and Glory. Everyone had always thought of Glory as the angel and she had been one in so many ways. Brooke hadn't even been able to save that angel. She hated herself for that, but she didn't want to reflect on the death now.

She knew she would though. It would flash before her eyes and she wouldn't be able to let it go. She had to die to get the answers she needed.

Only Conrad could do that for her.

He loved her enough to kill her and bring her back to life. They had an unspoken bond that had kept them apart from the other Borrowers. They had always been able to read the other's mind and they had always been attracted to one another.

So, here she was knowing what she was going to be asking him to do was insane. He would do it though. He always did the things she asked him to do.

He had a loyalty to her that no one else had from him. Not even the people that employed him to kill off other white lighters had his loyalty . Annoying foul beasts those white lighters were at times.

Brooke pulled away from Conrad and looked straight into his gray eyes.

He was her dark lighter. He had been assigned to her after they had learned of her and his connection. She was his only charge and she liked it that way. She got into enough trouble as it was to worry about another charge taking his time away from her.

She smiled at him and gave him a long kiss of welcoming. It was also a goodbye kiss if her plan didn't work out the way she wanted it to. She hoped her plan would work out better. There was still revenge to be had and a life to live with Conrad after this all was over.

She loved him. She loved him a lot and she wanted him to know it.

"God, Conrad," she whispered as she pressed her forehead to his and took a breath of his Axe cologne in. He always had smelt so good. He always knew how to hold her. "I'm so tired of pretending."

"I know, baby. But you don't have to pretend with me. "he said. He was the only one that could pull off calling her baby.

"You know we could go anywhere. We could leave this plane of existence and never come back and no one would be the wiser."

"Completely wipe out our existence?" she whispered at his suggestion in surprise.

Conrad was always one to not play by the rules. He liked to push the limits as much as he could. This- what he was offering- was beyond the rules though.

This was unmentionable. You couldn't just leave one place of existence for another without consequences. It would kill them if not create a current of bad chain reactions in this realm of existence that would affect everyone around them. Right now it sounded so good though.

Screw the consequence's live by the moment. That was the way they lived life. Why not? Why not let it all burn away?

Because, Brooke, she answered herself. The Charmed Ones would be on your tail in a second. They would end up literally dead then if not horribly debilitated by the Elders wrath after the Elders got through with them.

The last thing she needed was that.

That and the one reunion she knew that she would inevitably end up happening if she did consent to Conrad's ploy.

"No," she said.

"Yes," he said suggestively. He smiled down onto her and flexed his fingers through hers.

He could make it sound so good. She had other plans though. She had to remember that.

She broke away from him. He followed her to the pool. The greenish blue water filtered colorful shadows of her face as she stared down into it.

"Death was in that poisonous wave, And in its gulf a fitting grave For him who thence could solace bring To his lone imagining- Whose solitary soul could make An Eden of that dim lake. "she whispered t the waved of water.

"Poe, at a time like this?" he asked, coming and taking her hand in his to kiss.

She looked at him from a tilted perception of love, and her eyes flashed. "I have a favor to ask."

He looked at her questioningly. He knew what she wanted and he didn't want to ask. He didn't probably want to fulfill her wish even though as her dark lighter he had to. He stayed quiet and she raised her eyebrows in the darkness.

"Have you thought this out?" he asked instead of asking what she wanted.

She grinned at him like the Cheshire cat . "As fully as a sane mortal could."

He nodded and swallowed. She saw his gray eyes turn almost black as they searched her pools green waters looking for an answer in the tide. He was looking for a way out for her and he knew better. She wouldn't let the man who had killed her friend go so easily without justice and she knew her friend knew who he was and how to destroy him better then she would.

"Conrad." she asked in a quiet voice.

"Present," he answered and then he swept her up into his strong arms. She let him into her embrace as she pretended she wasn't at deaths door. Too bad her father had been so particular about how she ended up in life. Otherwise, she wouldn't have to deal with this right now.

"I'm ready."

"What do you want from me?" he asked.

He knew the answer as well as Brooke knew the question. He wanted her to say it aloud. He wanted her to be able to accept it knowing she was asking for a strange fate worse then death.

She smiled at him sweetly, touched his curly black hair, looked hard into his eyes to challenge him in case he decided to fight her on it and answered him. "I want you to kill me."

He looked hard into her eyes and answered instantly without a moments hesitation ."As you wish."


	5. Watching Your World From Afar

Wyatt couldn't take it. So, he had started to walk away from her. The girl he had loved. The only girl he had ever truly loved was with someone else. Someone who was evil and who didn't know how to love in the first place.

Wyatt didn't want to stay and watch the happy couple. He didn't want to see them kiss and hold each other like the rest of the world didn't exist. He didn't want to think about the times before when it had been the same way between them....

"Wyatt?"

He turned. It was daylight around him now and it was a chilled October morning right before school. She was standing there smiling at him with those beautiful clear topaz eyes of hers. Truth was hidden behind her dark eyelashes as she looked at him.

They were on the street by his house. The chipped and cracked white sidewalk was underneath his shaky legs and the hottest girl in school was actually talking to him. It was really happening , but the world had never felt this real to him before .

It felt like the world had stopped. Deep down inside it hadn't stopped. He felt as if everything in the world was electrifying itself and humming through his veins at this precise moment of time. He felt as if this were the moment for anything to come true.

She would never know it, but he had been watching over her since the first moment he had seen her.

"Do you ever think that there is something beyond us in the world? Like there is something governing us somehow to do what we do?" she asked.

"Yes," he whispered. He didn't know where she was going with this. The only thing that came to his mind was the factor of him being a witch lighter. He wondered if she had figured it out. He wondered if she knew what he was. He wondered how she had found it if she knew. If she thought he was a freak or not.

"I do too." she said simply and stared up at the sky. A small smile appeared on her lips and she bite her lower lip eagerly trying to say what she felt was important. "So, in all actuality we wouldn't have free will at all to do with our lives what we want. We would only have circumstance ruling us... Circumstances disposed on us by the ruler of our fates."

Where are you going with this? He wondered. He looked at her. Her short dark chestnut brown hair shone goldenly in the light and her eyes sparkled as she slowly got to her point.

He knew for a fact magic existed. He had been born magical and he had lived in it every moment of his life. He knew he was magical. He knew that some people would consider that scary and that's why the whole world didn't know about his magical side. He knew some people would be alright with it.

She took one hovering side to him. They were inches apart.

He could feel her warm body radiating off of his. He looked down into her eyes and waited to find out if this was the moment the world would turn upside down between them. She searched his eyes with hers. He had a feeling she was looking for something in him and he had a feeling she wasn't quite so sure about him anymore.

"What are you?" he asked softly. He didn't know where his question was leading to. At first he was going to ask what she was doing or talking about or trying to say. Instead, he ended with such a dumbass comment he felt like hitting himself over the head a few thousands times with a baseball bat.

She ignored it though. She touched his cheek instead. "Circumstances being as they are... is this okay?" she whispered.

He looked at her so confused. He touched her hand resting on his cheek. She looked hard at him and away and then at him again in her timidness. Then, she nodded a little to herself when he didn't take her hand from his cheek. She gave him a soft, small kiss on the other cheek, then his neck, and then the side of his mouth.

"Is this okay?" she whispered in his ear as she kissed his neck again.

"Yes," he whispered.

He wanted to scream it. He didn't though. It was what he had wanted since the first time he had seen her. He had wanted her to feel like this towards him, he had wanted her to act like this towards him, and now she did.

He didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to react as he felt as if he were still stuck in some version of his dreams.

She was real and before him. She, the shy, beautiful, awkward girl at his school, had made the first move.

He held onto her and kissed her back fully on the mouth. He didn't care who saw or what anyone said. He didn't care if the world ended or if he had somewhere else to be at the moment. He was with her. That was all that mattered and he loved her. God, he'd loved her since forever.

He held onto her tightly smelling the scent of vanilla from her body invading his senses. He held onto her as she smiled. He felt the smile through the kiss as he kissed her again happily....

Wyatt wanted to hit something. He wanted to break things and destroy anything that reminded him of her. He wanted to start with his stupid shirt. The stupid shirt he had pulled out of the basement in order to help her remember him. The shirt she had loved of his.

He had been so stupid!

He ripped the shirt off of his body and threw it in the bushes beside her house. The, he started to move around the three story brick house slowly in order to not show his presence to them so he could get out of the gated pool area.

In the process, he gave one last side glance to where they had been standing together making out moments before. They were no longer there. Shit! Had they found him out? He searched around him quickly for them as he waited for an attack but then he finally saw them both walking into the shallow end of the pool together.

Both were still fully clothed. He found this incredibly weird. He stopped in his tracks and watched as the still very fully clothed couple went into the pool. The whole time his eyes kept on Brooke's face.

He could see the telltale dark circles under her eyes from not being able to sleep. He could also see the determination in her eyes as she slowly, unwaveringly followed her new boyfriend into the pool.

Now, what the hell were they doing?


	6. In My Dying Moments

Brooke took a breath and looked around the world that she knew so well.

She had heard some tall tales before of people who had saw the dead and then come back from it. These people who passed through the gates of death never were the same. She hoped she wouldn't come back crazy or messed up emotionally. She hoped she wasn't affected.

She nodded in confirmation at Conrad as he watched her. His gray eyes were so sad. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know if he could save her. He didn't want to kill her, but he wanted to do what she asked. He didn't want to be selfish when he knew how important this was not only in the source of revenge for them but also in the factor that they were in danger now too.

She was going on a lot of faith. She had the faith that in times before this when she had been hurt he had found that out through their connection. So now she hoped that he would hear her through the connection when she was on the other side of life. She hoped he would hear her and save her life.

There was only one person she needed to talk to now to get the answers she needed. Glory. She was still so new to being dead so she probably hadn't fully crossed over into wherever she needed to go to in order to pass through her life to the next.

Conrad. Poor Conrad. He was watching her as if she were going to never come back to him. Maybe, she should have took him up on his offer. Maybe, they could get away easily by going to another plane of existence.

Maybe, she was only fooling herself.

She placed her hand on his cheek and then rested her head on his shoulder. He needed her as much as she needed him now. They both were in danger.

This was the only way to get what they needed. This was the only way she knew how to get the answers to the questions no one knew the answers to.

She took a few breaths of air and held to his hand tightly.

She was scared. Sure, who wouldn't be?

She was going to Limbo. She had no idea what that would be like. She didn't know how it would be on her being still near life and not being her time or also being dead and there. She had no idea if she would be coming back to him. All she knew was that she had to have some faith in something.

She had to. It didn't mattered that the Elders were against her. They had been from the very start. She was damaged goods to them and they hated her. She was nothing short of a quick death and an easily remedied world to them.

She sure as hell wasn't going to make it that easy on them to get rid of her though.

She wanted him to go with her. She didn't want to face this alone. She had gotten so spoiled and so used to doing everything with him. Now, he couldn't go and she was scared.

She had to do this on her own. Conrad wanted to be with her to make sure she would be okay every time they went into battle or fought before this and now he couldn't come along for the ride.

This was one battle she had to fight on her own though. This was her problem and not his.

She held onto him. He had been in her life since the first moment she had moved here. He had been the only good thing besides Glory about this personal hell she had been reduced to living in.

Now, all she had was him and vice versa. So, she was hell bent on returning to him.

Even if she had to figure out a way to kill Death she would do it.

She breathed in the air around her. She smelled poppies from the garden, the strong odor of chlorine, and his cologne. The frailty of the small white pool lights illuminated them in the darkness of her backyard in stilted silhouettes as they passed through the green water.

They came to a stop in the middle of the shallow end of the pool.

Neither of them had taken any clothes off or had changed into swimming suits. There was no need to waste time on that. It was nearly midnight. The hour of morning on a new day and the last few minutes of the day before. The witching hour she thought wryly as she let her eyes travel over the star belted black hole of a sky.

It was a beautiful day to die.

The cold water chilled her to the bone. Her bare feet felt like they were mounds of ice attached to her body and her clothes were sticking to her like super glue. Conrad looked so funny in front of her in the pool with this clothes on. He was always spontaneous when it came to everything, but here before her he was the most wonderful.

His long dark trench coat floated around him in the water and his black shirt was drenched and glued to him also. His eyes were blurring as he looked at her pleadingly. He didn't accept this as a way out, but he did do it for her because that was what he was there to do.

She smiled at him and kissed him one last kiss that she drained her life into.

"Now, don't wake me unless I tell you it's time." she reminded him.

"You know, most girls would never have asked me to kill them?" he told her. "Buy them stuff, compliment them maybe , or something. Most girls would ask for life." he told her. "Or their own whole superficial version of life that they have."

"Well, lucky for you I am asking you to do your specialty." she told him darkly. "I can be your first willing victim."

She waded into the shallow end more as she let the palms of her hands slide over the water and make small circles on its surface. A whirlpool slowly started underneath her pale fingertips.

The water, as frozen as it felt beneath her chilled fingertips, felt nice as it lolled through her hands. She turned to look back at him and smiled seductively. Then, she placed her chilled hand on his cheek.

"Fine, you win like you always do. Just remember there is always a chance of you not being able to come back. ."he told her slowly. "You have three minutes to do what you need to do, Brooke. Three."

"I thought there wasn't a time period."

"Three minutes or else anymore than that and you would come back to me as a living vegetable."

"Oh, got it." she laughed nervously. She didn't even bother to envision herself as a white body hooked up to a machine.

"If you see any dark blobs get the hell out of there. You get me? Get out they aren't there for your health they are there because you are intruding." he warned her as his fingers bit into her arms painfully.

"Fine." she replied dully.

Second thoughts paraded inside of her mind as she watched his worried face. He had never really warned her about the supernatural guards there. She had heard though that death would be her major problem and not some dark blobby thing.

Dark blobs = bad. Check.

"Are you ready?" he asked her as he brought her closer to him in the swirling water. She looked up at him hesitantly and nodded as her cotton dry throat produced words that wouldn't pass through her lips.

She knew she should say her goodbyes to him. She knew it would be better if she did. She knew she shouldn't be playing in forbidden territories but oh well. She knew she was powerful enough to do it and possibly get away with it so she sure as hell would.

He nodded to her. Traced her lips with this fingertips and then he slowly pushed her down in the water.

She looked up at him the whole time. She came to a sitting position in the water as she watched him take a hesitant breath. Then, his dark gray eyes turned black and he dunked her under the water fully.

Her death had begun.

It was weird looking up at him. The water squirreled around her sight making it foggy and disconnected from reality. The cold water pressed through her body now more then ever like sharp razor blades. Her breath locked in her throat and she felt her lungs expand.

Air. People took it for granted so much. It was clear and had no weight and so precious to life. It was so everyday. Breathing was something people did barely without thought so no wonder it was taken for granted so easily.

She wanted it so much as she stared up at him. Her mind dizzied around. Her body tried to react and resurface. He held her down harder inside the cold water of ice around her body. He was doing what she had asked him to do and that was all that mattered.

Her sight became foggy. On the edges of her sight it was slowly becoming black. It was like having tunnel vision. She was slowly going blind.

She never took her eyes off of him as he drowned her. She pressed her hand to his wrist. It wasn't a demand to be let go it was a command to keep doing it. She was almost there. Soon she would find out who had murdered her friend. Soon, she could figure out a way to save herself and her boyfriend.

Her vision fanned out to a complete black. She could hear weird echoes of the water splashing around his body and tapping against the cement surface of the pool.

It was all surreal now. It all didn't matter now.

Brooke was there. Floating on a tidal wave. It was beautiful. There was no pain just indifference to everything even feeling. A feeling that gave peace within itself.

She saw the things most people took for granted in life. She saw a few of the major things that had happened in her life that had made her feel most alive as she traveled to Limbo.

She was five and was finger painting as she tried to mimic her mother and her mother was right there beside her painting original oil paintings that would make Monet cry....

Her father was twirling her in his arms and then in the air as he showed her how she could fly....

She was at school for the first time and awkward and silent. She saw a boy with fluffy blond curls. She had never gotten the chance to speak to him. He was never close enough to her, but she did see something was different about him....

Wyatt....

He was there and they were kissing... he was in her bed and it was the last time they would ever see each other... he was walking away from her house for the last time as she watched him fade from her view as her father pulled out of the driveway..

She saw herself finding her Glory's body.. She saw the water in front of her eyes as she died and then it all went white..

Not one image or memory had Conrad in it....


	7. So We Meet Again

She sat up slowly feeling as if she were dreaming.

Brooke looked around at the familiar place that she was in.

She was in the old Holbury Park. She had been lying on the cold stone of the gushing water fountain beside her. As a kid she had ran into the fountain on numerous occasions and created havoc splashing unsuspecting passersby's until she and Wyatt had gotten into trouble.

This had been the last place she had ever been able to have fun without any externally weird consequences. Brooke smiled as she smelled the rough scent of roses nearby. She played her hand over the restless fountains gleaming water and smiled down at her wavering reflection in the cold water.

Her father had always said she looked like her mother. Now she admitted it.

She had seen only one picture of her own mother at her age. It had been a black and white picture that had been torn up by her grandparents because they were angry with the man her own mother had chosen to marry. Her grandparents had estranged the whole family because her mother had gone through with the wedding.

Even the picture she had seen after it had been taped back up together had barely let her know until now how much of a mirror reflection she had been to her mother. No wonder her father had always had trouble looking at her sometimes. No wonder he had tried to keep her far away from him when her mother had first died.

She was like the living ghost of the woman he had fought to have in his life. She was the only thing left between them.

No wonder he didn't want to lose her so easily.

Brooke stepped away from the fountain and looked at the settings around her. Trees and bushes were everywhere. This place had been dedicated to natures preservation in its small time in existence.

It had been beautiful here before they had torn it down to make a parking lot for some local business.

She didn't have to look far to see what she had been missing since she had woken up. As she wiped her wet hand on her jeans she saw herself and Wyatt running around. They had already splashed a couple walking by and the man had ran after them.

She remembered it all too well.

The man had scared them half to death. Never before had anyone ever came after them when they had pulled their little pranks. They only got yelled at and a few people would splash them back but that had been their basic backlash from their pranks.

This man had been infuriated. He had been creating the mood for his girlfriend and here they were a bunch of idiot kids pulling pranks on the restless population. So, he had ran after them. He had practically ran them out of the park.

They had ran down the hill. She had fallen then. She had fallen and had been hurt. Wyatt had made her keep going though. He had made her get to her sore feet and run as far and as fast as she could. Even then, on her twisted ankle she had listened to him.

He had always known how to survive. He had always protected her.

He had lead her away. They had escaped the angry, scary undersexed man. Then, they had found a small cave to play in. It had then become their new hang out.

It was funny now that she thought about it, but she had never been able to find the cave on her own. Wyatt had always had to be there with her to find it and half the time he would make her cover her eyes so she wouldn't be able to see exactly where it was.

He'd always been a little off.

Brooke walked to the corner of the park. She stood beside a tree and leaned against it as she saw her memory pan out in front of her. She saw her child self's scared face and had to laugh a bit. it was completely priceless.

"I thought I would find you here." a voice interrupted her from seeing her child self and Wyatt run away from the scary man.

She knew that voice. She had found a lot of comfort in that voice so many times before this very moment. She smiled as she turned and was happy for once in a long time to see her old friend. "Glory, goddess, I have missed you."

She didn't wait for a response. Instead, she only landed herself inside of Glory's arms and hugged her.

Her friend was dressed in a white gown that only a goddess would wear. Her long golden hair was flowing down her back in ringlets that were tamed down now. In death she had found the perfect hair. How many times had they tried to keep Glory's hair tame in life? Too many to count now.

It was so weird to know her friend was alive here. That she herself was trespassing here in the land of death and that they only had a very small amount of time here to be together.

"Brooke, what have you done?" Glory asked her as she pulled her back at arms length to look into her eyes clearly.

"I couldn't not make sure you were okay. I couldn't save you in life I thought I at least could make sure you were okay," she let her words fade away as tears burned the insides of her eyes.

"Goddess, Brooke. This is forbidden." Glory told her quietly as her green flecked golden eyes surveyed the area as if at any moment millions of evil guards would throw her out.

"Come on. Since when have I been known to follow the rules."

"Never. Still, this is worse then your usual intrigues. If you are found out you will be punished."

"I know, but I need answers though, Glory. I need you to tell me." she told her. "I'm sorry. I couldn't. I.. it just.. Well.."

She didn't know how to say 'hey, friend how did you die? I need the 411 on who killed you so if you could just dish that out for me right now I'll be on my way. Oh, and bygones.' How wrong was it for her to be here asking her newly deceased friend who her murderer was.

"I know why you are here." Glory said.

"Oh, good." she gushed out in relief. Then, she felt stupid. "I wanted to come under different circumstances, but matters as they are."

"Don't apologize. Words mean nothing here."

"Yet we bother to talk." Brooke laughed bitterly.

"You are in danger. You are in more danger then you can expect Brooke. I can't even begin to warn you."

"Well, begin warning me and tell me who did this to you so I can kick some demonic ass."

Glory looked at her hard and shook her. Then she walked along the poppy strewn path.

Brooke immediately followed her friend as the world around them slowly darkened. Right about now her child self and Wyatt had found the cave and were playing in it. She had figured out her ankle wasn't really broken either after Wyatt had inspected it.

"Glory?" she asked her, unsure for once if she should have came here after all.

Her friend wasn't acting like she was herself at all. Her friend had been so carefree in life. She had been almost like a hippy with her whole peaceful laidback nature and nonjudgmental kick. Now here she was not laid back at all, but on edge like a black cat scraping around a room after hearing the screech of chalk on a chalkboard.

"You're kind of scaring me. So please stop that." she said to her friend.

Glory turned back to her then. Her eyes were glowing a green color that wasn't normal. They were a creepy glowing green that was almost opaque in the darkness. Glory put her hands on Brooke's shoulders firmly as Brooke watched her in confusion.

"You are the reason I am dead."

"What? No. No way." she said in denial as she broke away from her friend or whatever it was that was impersonating her friend right in front of her.

"They didn't want me. I was only in the way. I wasn't planned on. So he killed me." Glory told her in a voice completely devoid of emotion.

"He? They?"

A rush of light paralyzed Brooke as she asked. It was not at all what she was expecting. She felt her life rushing back at her like an oncoming train about to run straight into a broken human body.

She felt her body connecting to her soul again. Something she had not given any headway or choice on.

She felt the life poring back into her. She felt the world poring inside of her. She felt the pain from her body as it started to function again. She felt the rough edged pain soar through her brutally choked throat. Oxygen hurt as she coughed it into her body.

Glory disappeared for a moment and she was at the pool all over again.

Then, she felt the life drag out of her. She felt her connection to the real world spread out away from her and scatter as her body fell back into the water. She felt her brain not working as she saw gray and purple shadows cascade over her blurry sight.

Then, she was back again. She was in front of Glory.

Glory was staring at her so sadly. She looked so beautiful here. She was so serene. Whatever knowledge she had gave her even more beauty then she had had in life.

Brooke held out her hands to Glory who took them eagerly. She coughed on her own shoulder as she did. The world around her in its dark color was getting back into her system. When she got back to reality she was going to tell Conrad a thing or too about obeying the plan.

"Glory," she hissed out. Her throat felt raw as she smiled at her helplessly in her breathlessness.

"Brooke, your time is short here. You have already outstayed your welcome."

"What?" she asked still a little dazed.

Then she saw the black blobs coming at them. They slithered like snakes. They all made a noise like the static a radio made when the station wasn't found. They weren't happy with her. They were out for her blood now.

"He did this for a reason, Brooke. You have a destiny planned for you that they never told you about."

"What destiny? Who?"

"I can only answer you one question. If I say too much they'll get me."

"You're dead, Glory. Who is that powerful that you have to worry about them here in the afterlife?" she asked, laughing harshly at her best friend now turned goddess.

"Brooke, seriously. Don't screw around here."

Now that was the girl she knew. Glory, for being the laidback hippie that she was, always had a way to come to a point quickly.

"Fine then. Who killed you?" she asked her dead friend as they both backed up a little bit from the blobs.

There was only one good thing about the blobs. They were as slow as snails when they were coming after someone.

"Are you sure?"

"Okay, fist you say ask the right question. So then I do. Then, you ask me if I am sure. What are your trying to do here? Drive me crazy?" she asked impatiently.

"It was Conrad." Glory told her softly firm.

"What?" she asked, paling as her fingers bit into her dead friend's fingers.

It wasn't everyday that you found out the person you loved was a double crossing murderer.

Just as she asked she felt the real world coming back at her again. This was a harder hit on her soul this time though. This time it wasn't willing to give up. No wonder Conrad hadn't wanted her to come into the afterlife in the first place.

Why? Why would he do that? Glory had nothing against him.

She shook her head as she again saw Glory's image collapse in front of her very eyes and felt the cold chilling water erupt around her. She felt the clothes soaked to her body and the air raking through her system hurting her. She couldn't fight it.

It was happening to quickly. Glory smiled quietly as she watched her. The distance between them was greater now.

"He wasn't alone.... He had... you have to be.."was all she could hear pass from Glory's lips.

No! No, it wasn't time to go back yet. She tried to push Conrad away from her soaking body as the real world came back to her.

She was cold and her body was aching. Her heart was thundering in her body and her throat was raw. She was in pain and she had no idea what to do.

He had pulled her back for a reason. Maybe, he knew what she knew. Maybe, he was trying to make it short to save himself.

Why would he do that though? Why kill her best friend? Unless Glory had seen something she shouldn't have.

"No." she gulped in air trying to sound harder. "No! Take me back there now. I have to go back!" she said as her voice grew louder and more fierce.

Her eyesight was the last to come back.

Brooke opened her eyes to see a stranger in front of her.

Whoever had just saved her was a stranger. Ocean blue green eyes met hers fiercely as she felt herself being pulled away from the water and onto the cement ground as he leaned over her.

Whoever he was he had thought he had save her life when in all actuality he had just destroyed her only chance.


	8. What Do We Do Now

"No." she gulped in air trying to sound harder.

"No! Take me back there now. I have to go back!" she said as her voice grew louder and more fierce.

Her eyesight was the last to come back.

Brooke opened her eyes to see a stranger in front of her.

Whoever had just saved her was a stranger. Ocean blue green eyes met hers fiercely as she felt herself being pulled away from the water and onto the cement ground as he leaned over her.

Whoever he was he had thought he had save her life when in all actuality he had just destroyed her only chance.

The cold, hard cement met her back as she felt the world comeback at her hard.

She had just realized her best friend had been murdered by her own lover. Add that to the fact that she was in danger and hadn't gotten any of Glory's last words and you had disaster. Her only chance at seeing her friend was now destroyed. She didn't doubt that death had felt her presence there unnecessarily and that her friend would no longer be there where she had left her the next time round.

That was if there was a next time. Thanks to this unknown stranger she would be lucky if she got out of all of this alive.

"Who are you?" she cried out as she pushed him away. She could no longer drown in those intense ocean blue eyes of the stranger. Instead, the real world was coming back to her hard. She was freezing. Her body was completely chilled from being in the cold water and now she was out in the cold artic nights wind.

She chose to forget the fact that she was freezing and instead focused her anger out on this stranger who had saved her life unnecessarily. "Never mind that. Get off me!"

He had tried to touch her. A small dark strand of icy chilled hair had fallen into her face and the stranger in front of her had just reached out to her to move it behind her ear. She had instinctively pushed his hand away from her face and got to her feet. She took a few steps backwards to study him as he followed her to his own feet.

He was cute. Whoever he was he was very, very nice looking. He was as wet as she was. His clothes were drenched. He had no shirt on and his blue jeans were stapled to him.

What the hell was he doing without a shirt on on a night like this?

"Hey, are you okay?" he asked her softly.

"Yeah, I am fine. You, on the other hand, are in for some trouble, "she told him as she conjured a fireball inside the palm of her hand.

Her fireball was unlike any he had ever seen she could tell that easily as he pulled back.

Her magic wasn't like most witches or demons. Her magic was brought to her from the dead and so some things she could do were a little off. Her fireball instead of looking like red golden fire it was the color of gray and black ash as it rose in the palm of her hand.

It could kill as easily as real magic. Sometimes it seemed to destroy people who got in her way a lot easier and a lot quicker then the real magic that most magical beings were born with.

"Wow, crap. Wait, please." he said as he drew back a step with his hands in the air.

"For what? You just totally destroyed my connection to Limbo." Brooke told him as she titled her head to the side in anger.

Conrad stood firmly behind her. He was pissed, too. She could tell that by all the waves of rage filtering into her own body.

Now, she understood the first brief contact with her body and then her being alive again. Conrad must have fought this stranger hard but the stranger had gotten the upper hand over him in the fight.

How was that possible?

Conrad usually would use all of his strength as well as his dark lighter powers to kill off anyone that had ever got in his way. Of course, this stranger may not have gotten in his way. This stranger may have been his excuse for letting him bring her back so she wouldn't find out that he had killed her friend.

Still, this was a complete stranger. She knew her neighbors and he wasn't one of them. There was no way she was going to believe he was just sitting around in his car and saw her being drowned in her backyard. It made no sense.

"I thought you were dying."

"So what? You needed to resuscitate me?" she asked and then she laughed bitterly. "Like being alive is really some shade of wonderful?"

"Hey, I'm sorry.. I came all this way and then I say Mr. big and tough guy there trying to drown you so I thought 'hey, she might need help'. So sue me for trying to save your life." the stranger replied in annoyment as he watched her with haunted eyes.

"Goddess, who do you think you are? You just waltz in here and try to save me.. You're a complete stranger and you don't even know me. You don't understand any of this and you only came in in the middle of it all." she retorted as she paced around the pool yard. Then, she stopped in front of him. "Okay, say I believe your lame cover story. What's your name?"

"Wyatt." he replied.

She felt Conrad come at attention at the mention of the name. She had to admit it was a weird name to have now a days. Most parents didn't go into the old-fashioned names anymore. Instead, the names Apple and Feather seemed to have become traditional and new age.

Wyatt... She had known a Wyatt once. This couldn't be him though. She hadn't seen him in years. He had to have moved on from her.

"Well, okay, Wyatt. You ever go into a movie and it's right in the very middle of it?" she asked him as she watched his blue eyes burn darker.

"Yeah?" he replied, unsure of where she was going.

"And did you know what was going on?"

"No."

"Well, that's kind of like this. You came in during mid-half of the movie and started screaming at the top of your lungs bothering everyone else in the theatre who was trying to hear the important crucial part of the movie. You know why? Because you can't mind your own business. And that is why I should kill you." she told him.

"Hold on a second! What did you expect? After what went down yesterday with your best friend being murdered here. I come in and see a guy drowning you. What did you expect me to do?" Wyatt asked, completely enraged at her acting as if her being drowned happened every day.

Wyatt couldn't believe this was the girl he had once loved. She was nothing like her. She wasn't happy or shy. She was a bitch and she was confident and she was outspoken. She acted more like a general then a girl the same age as him.

She was completely different.

It was like the girl he had fallen in love with had been destroyed. The only thing that was still the same about her was her face. The way her mouth pursed together when she was annoyed and her eyes. Her topaz eyes would never change. They were still the beautiful topaz colored he had fallen in thousands of times before.

Even now as he looked into them he remembered the last time they had been together......

They were lying in her maple wood sleigh shaped bed. Her deep red comforters and covers and sheets layered over them haphazardly as the small slivers of dawning sunlight blew through the room and covered them in a gold light. A wind chime sounded softly in the distance as the breeze blew it. He watched her as she slowly opened her dream ridden topaz eyes to see him beside her.

She smiled at him and laid lazily on her stomach as she watched him.

She was beautiful.

"Wy, how long have I been asleep?"

"A few hours?" he told her softly as he brushed her hair away.

"God, I was trying to stay awake since this would be our last night together. Looks like I failed that mission, " she laughed watching him as easily as he watched her.

"It's okay." he told her simply as he moved over to her and turned onto his stomach. She smiled at him and traced the woods engraved design as he kissed her softly on the cheek.

"Don't go with him. Stay here," he told her.

"Like I have a choice in the matter," she replied leaning her head on his. "Wyatt, I've been meaning to ask this since forever. Would you change anything?"

"Change anything?" he asked.

"About us. Would you have not done it all the same since we're like.. Never going to be together?" she asked.

"Hey, we still have time."

"Wyatt, I hate to infiltrate your whole happy ending thoughts, but we have like.." she checked the clock to see there was only about an hour left alone between them before her father was going to wake her up to start to pack up the truck. "We have an hour to say goodbye. You don't drive and I don't drive. Your parents have never really liked me so they will probably never take you up to see me. So, how will we have that happy ending?"

He looked at her steadily. "Haven't I always been there for you?"

"In one way or another." she replied with a small smile.

"Then, give me a chance to figure it all out." he replied kissing her hard. "An hour you say."

She laughed and kissed him back as she flung her arms around him......

"What do you know about my friend?" Brooke asked him half in a whisper and half in rage. Her soft waveringly tear filled eyes blazed in front of him bringing him out of his daze.

"I know she was murdered." he told her quietly.

"Yeah, you, the police, and half the world that watches the news, and gets off on this stuff." she replied as she shook her head and turned from him.

"I know it was paranormal." he added. He didn't want to see her back to him now. Not after he had come here for her.

"Who the hell are you?" Conrad asked from behind her.

Wyatt had almost forgotten about the dark lighter. He hated him. He hated him for being with Brooke the way he wanted to be with her and he hated him for changing her into this person before him.

She was so hard.

She still cared and that was showing through when he had seen her eyes betray her at the mention of her friend. Otherwise, she was nothing like the girl he had known before.

He wanted her back. He didn't care if he had to kill this godforsaken dark lighter in order to do it.

"Wait, you said your name was Wyatt?" Conrad said after a moment.

Wyatt knew he was piecing it all together. Who else on earth had the name Wyatt? Who else on earth had the strength to bring Conrad away from the girl he loved in order to save her life? It had to be Wyatt Halliwell. The eldest son of a Charmed One.

"Yeah, Wyatt." he replied.

"Wait, wait, wait. Wyatt.. Halliwell?" Brooke asked in surprise as her eyes watched him uneasily as she pieced his identity out herself.

"Yeah, do you remember me?" he asked her as he pushed his full attention onto her as it dawned over her.

Brooke remembered him now. He didn't look all that different. Except for the hair. Last time they had been together when she had been crying and he had come to her like he always did whenever she needed someone....

She had been moving and he had promised to see her again. They had been together. He had been her first.

He had been her first love also.

He had come to her in dreams when she had moved away and helped her through it all. It was real. After all this time, she knew it was real. He had been there.

Then, he had just stopped out of no where.

He had disappeared from her life. Conrad had entered it then.

Brooke didn't have much time to do anything. She knew Conrad knew who Wyatt was. She also knew that he wouldn't pass up the chance to kill a twice blessed being of goodness.

It was about time she chose what side she wanted to be on.

She held her hand back to Conrad and he watched her carefully. He didn't understand what she meant. He didn't know anything about her past history with Wyatt.

He took her hand and kissed it as she saw the crossbow and arrow appear in his other hand. She knew Wyatt felt the threat. She knew he wouldn't leave her here with Conrad. She also knew he wouldn't see the bow and arrow until it was too late.

"What a small world." she whispered to Wyatt with a mysteriously sad smile.

She felt Conrad start to move around her to get his perfect shot to kill Wyatt for once and for all. He always liked it when evil triumphed over good.

He didn't get the chance though.

She pushed him back with the hand he was still holding. He was caught off guard for a second as he flew back a few steps, but still ended up staying on his feet. Then, she moved to Wyatt moving faster then any normal human or magical being could.

She pushed him down. He was on the ground with her on top of him just as the arrow that Conrad had sent missed him by a millimeter.

Wyatt stared up at her with those eyes. His eyes.. His ocean blue eyes... they had never stopped haunting her. She leaned into him and smiled seductively as she kept him close to the ground. He couldn't hear it, but she could hear Conrad loading his bow with another arrow.

"How about a familiar place to go along with that familiar face of yours." she whispered to him.

He only swallowed in shock underneath her as she smiled. She kissed him softly on the mouth as she orbed him out of there along with her and away from Conrad.

She could feel Conrad's anger and jealousy and betrayed feelings swallowing her whole as she did.

"I'll find you and I'll find him and he will die once and for all." he threatened her inside her mind as they appeared where they needed to be.

She stood up and smiled. Brushing herself off as she held a hand out to him to help him to his feet that he took slowly.

Wyatt stared at her in disbelief the whole time. She had found the most familiar place in the world for him. He was safe here even if she wasn't. He should have ever left his own home. Here was sanctuary for him. Her home was only death for him.

After all these years, he had come back. Why?

They were in his backyard and the Manor loomed over them in the impending silence. There was nothing they could say right now that would make a difference. She didn't even know where they could start..

"Wyatt, where have you... Oh. My. God!" they both heard a voice cry out.

Brooke smiled lazily knowing easily who that voice belonged to as she turned to meet its owner. In the process, she had saw Wyatt's surprised and worried look towards her and the voices owner as he looked to see the oldest most legendary Charmed One, Piper Halliwell, come out of the shadows.


	9. Mind Over Power

_Okay, I changed something very small for a reason that will be found out why in a bit of time of course. In the last chapter I changed the way they got to his house. Originally it was her shimmering, but I decided that it should be something else. She, instea, orbed him to his own backyard.... Don't worry you will get it in a bit._

_Oh, lots of thanks to OTHCharmedFreak, I see you've reviewed almost all my stories. Thanks a bunch you are totally awesome. You are also the reason I am updating so much better as of late. Kudos to you for reviewing so I have a fan to write for._

_Of course, this applies to shortie4283. _

_But where have the reviews from Isabella and Katie all gone? J_

"Hold on a sec! Wyatt Halliwell, where did you come from? And why are you with her?" Piper cried out as she quickly strided into the backyard.

The natural twilight of the dark world around them dimmed as the backyard filled with the feeling of immense power showering over it like a bath of meteor showers.

"Now, Piper, let's hear their story first." Leo said as he tried to calm his wife down a bit. He knew his wife was angry though. He knew it would take a lot to get her off of her overprotective, and worried war path for Wyatt's well being .

He had figured that Wyatt had just needed time alone earlier that day when his son hadn't come in for the family supper. So, he had been fine with him being away. He knew more then anyone how stressful not to mention insane the whole Halliwell life could be.

Hell, they lived in a full house without much privacy where half the time it was infested with incoming uninvited pests of demons. Wyatt was the most popular with the demons. They all knew he was the powerful twice-blessed son as well as they all knew that his own younger brother had come back from his own future to change him from turning evil. So, their main priority was to destroy him or change him.

So, Leo had completely understood when his oldest son had disappeared for a brief moment in time.

Of course, when a big paranormal event had spooked the sisters earlier Piper had made Leo search for Wyatt. Who, of course, had been unreadable as well as unsensable.

So, Leo had known as well as Piper that their son was either in grave danger, not on this earthly plane anymore, or else he had just cast a spell to hide himself from their watchful eyes. With their luck they tried to figure it all out, and now here Wyatt was.

He was perfectly healthy and safe and alive. He was standing right in front of them looking more alive then Leo had seen his own son look in years, and he was in deep shit.

Not only had he worried Piper but Leo had had the whole family out trying to figure out where he was in any place they knew him to ever have been in. He had even called Darryl to make sure that nothing really happened to him out in the real world.

Now, here he was. He had returned home verifying the fact that he had in fact concealed himself from them for his own selfish purposes of reuniting for a girl they hadn't allowed him to see from years ago and also showing them he had had a little rendezvous on the way.

Leo blinked a few times to make sure that what he was seeing was for sure. He was seeing the real thing. Standing right beside his own son was Brooke Glenview.

If it had been a few years back, she would have been a welcome sight to see, but years had changed her. She no longer shown with the innocence and kindness that had made Wyatt fall for her.

Now, she had an edge to her that she hadn't had before and the way she stood with her head titled back and a holy than thou smile spread over her face didn't help matters either.

Leo had made his son stop seeing her years ago when he had heard of her future to come. Hell, the Elders had even seen to starting the chain of events that would get her father to relocate by taking her mother's life.

Something he had never really consented to, but whatever saved his own family as well as his firstborn any trouble had been for the first.

The Elders had done it all for a reason.

That reason was very apparent as she stood before them. Her future and destiny hadn't been interlinked with their own. Sure, she had magic in her fate, but it was a dark magic. She possessed magic a human shouldn't have. She possessed borrowed magic.

Wyatt looked back from his Elder all-knowing peeved father to his very upset and worried mother and bit his lip. He had wanted a few more minutes with Brooke alone. It had been forever since he had been with her and now here he was with her, but his own parents were ruining it.

Her stolen kiss sat on his parched lips as his senses stayed in overdrive with it.

He took a side glance of her now that he could see her in the backyards brightly lit path. She had changed more then he had saw at the pool. Her hair was dark and wet as well as the rest of her and him now after she had laid over him on the trip here.

Her dark chestnut brown hair was longer then it had been before. Instead of the straight small bob she had had a few years ago it flowed down her back in a disarray of curls. Her topaz eyes had never changed in color, but the look in them now was a bit harder then he had ever seen before as well as untrusting with a small glint of wry humor over the salutation at hand. Her clothes were plastered to her and she was still barefoot.

She didn't let it show on the surface, but every time the wind blew she shivered heavily. She didn't meet his averted eyes though. Instead, she stared straight on into his father's and his mother's with a cold rage of bitterness he had never seen from her before.

He realized then that she must have known about the Elders decision to kill her mother.

He realized then that maybe this wasn't the most neutral ground that they should be on now. Since, of course, his parents had never liked him with her together and now that she had lost most of the goodness they were used to in her they probably saw her as the enemy.

"Answer me, young man!" Piper persisted as he ignored her husband's try to calm her down and stood with her dark brown hair flying in the hesitant wind and her hands on her hips.

Wyatt realized then that she was in her old fluffy pink slippers that Chris and he had bought her for Christmas when they were kids and deep blood red robe to cover her pajamas. The time must have passed without him realizing it or something because here he was and his mother was just about ready to go to bed. Which wasn't a good thing since she was going to be very crabby for still being awake past her bedtime.

His mother had always been obsessed with running the family like a tight knit clock or something. She was the first to rise and the last to go to bed. She must have stayed up to make sure he was going to get home safely. Which meant that he was in deep trouble keeping her up late. Especially, since that meant that his father had probably been talked into scanning for him and here he was no where to be scanned.

Nice work, Wyatt. He chided himself as he watched his mother's deep brown eyes as they looked into his own.

"Mom, look.."

"Oh, no.. No, mom, look.. I have looked. Your father has looked, Phoebe has premonitioned her butt off, Paige has orbed around, Chris has checked every place imaginable for you, Darryl has put an a. p. b. out on you, and I have been scrying for you all day. Don't look, mom, me because I have looked. It's about time you start to explain yourself, young man." she replied. "And explain why you have brought a paragon of evil to our very own backyard."

"Oh, come on, mom." he said.

Piper looked at her son and then folded her arms over her chest as her pale face screwed up into a look of complete impatience, "Wyatt."

"Wyatt, now is not the time to try to push your mother's buttons." Leo told his son as he looked from his son to Piper to Brooke.

"Fine, I read something in the paper about Brooke. Well, not her really her friend who was murdered in a paranormal way at her house and I went to make sure that she was okay."

"Did it ever cross your mind that she could have been the one doing the murdering?" Piper asked her son tilting her head to the side and studying Brooke now.

"Oh, hell, no. I did not kill my best friend!" Brooke cried taking a step forward.

Wyatt stood in surprise a moment and then he stepped to her side to keep her back. His mother wasn't in the mood for anything at the moment. If she got the chance to destroy an evil she would let off her steam that way. As he stepped to Brooke's side, Leo stepped to Piper's to make sure she didn't do anything she would regret later.

"Of course, you, being the paragon of good, you probably think I did since you don't agree with what I've become. Of course, correct me if I am wrong, but you didn't like me much before when I was good either so what am I supposed to do about that?" Brooke asked Piper.

"You're right. I never really liked you. You becoming remotely evil over the years hasn't really helped your cause much either."

"Look who's calling the kettle black."

"What is that supposed to mean," Piper asked as flicked her hand in annoyment.

"You created me, Piper. Or don't you want to have that over your head?"

"Oh, really. How did I create you?" Piper asked annoyed.

As she asked a nosy group that consisted of Chris, Paige, and Phoebe all came out into the yard. Chris stopped to the side of both his aunts and gaped at the sight in front of him. Then, he along with his aunts squinted to make sure that what they were seeing was for real.

"Is that?" Paige whispered.

"Yeah." Phoebe replied in a surprised whisper as well as a bit of awe as she stared at the girl in front of them.

"Damn, evil agrees with her." Paige added as they watched.

"Not if Piper has anything to do with it." Phoebe replied.

"Piper, you and your husband had a decision to make regarding my future. I could have stayed her in San Francisco and went on with my normal, bland life never once being exposed to magic unless by you all. Or I could have went to Sacramento where my father would join a magic group, and become in your terms a 'paragon of evil'. "Brooke replied in a hiss. "So, Piper, your decision was the tie breaker. You made the decision to get rid so that you wouldn't have to worry about Wyatt and I getting any more attached then we already were. Hence, placing me in the path of evil. You have no one other then yourself to thank for that."

Piper gaped at her and then she looked over at Leo disbelievingly, "Is that true?"

"Piper." Leo said softly not at all wanting to be drawn into it.

"Leo, is that true?" she asked already knowing the answer but very much liking being in denial.

It wasn't everyday you found out you were the reason that of one of the most evil let alone powerful beings on Earth became evil in the first place.

"Leo," Piper whispered.

If anyone had been looking at Brooke for that second instead of being so focused on Piper's understanding and ruin over the situation they would have seen a flicker of emotion come from her defensive shield against all of them. They would have seen a brief saddens as well as pity.

Leo told his wife softly as he took a hold of her small hands in his. "Yes, Piper. What she said.. It's all true."


	10. Don't Get Me Wrong

_Thanks for the wonderful reviews. Keep them coming. Oh, and Chris Drew Lover I will keep you in mind if I need any help at all in the near future. Sorry, OTHCharmedFreak about giving you that majorly bad headache. I guess that is going around a lot with this story's twists and turns (ha ha ha ha ha) as well as my other story. Shortie4283 sorry about the confusion. I guess you will just have to keep reading. Oh how I love plot twists._

"But I didn't know." Piper whispered to her husband in surprise. Then, her anger instantly erupted like a volcano as she pushed Leo's warm guiding hands away from her. "You didn't tell me." she said in frustration as her brown foggy eyes followed his cloudy blue ones.

"Honey, I'm sorry. You were so hell bent..."

"You didn't tell me, Leo! That's the important thing right here and right now. You never told me that she could have been perfectly been fine here. You didn't tell me she would have stayed good if I voted for her to stay here. You didn't tell me I was the one that could turn her evil!" Piper cried out as she watched her husband in a devastated betrayal. "I trusted you and you never told me. You just said 'Piper, honey, we have a decision to make'." she said to him as she mimicked how he would talk by deepening her voice to make it low like his was and condescending sounding like his could be at times. "You never said it would be my fault she became evil."

"Because it wouldn't be your fault, Piper!" Leo cried out trying to get her to calm down so he could try to explain to her that she wasn't at all evil for doing what she had done.

"Oh, yeah. Explain how I am not responsible?" she asked him with pursed lips and folded arms. Her chocolate brown eyes teared a little in anger and a few thousand other emotions she felt at the moment.

Back when this all had happened she had only wanted her son to have a chance at life. She had thought that Brooke would get hurt somehow or he would be destroyed if Brooke somehow was hurt because of him being innately magical. So, Piper had wanted to shield him from that pain.

She also had been against their relationship. Not that she had ever really hated Brooke personally, but she had hated the fact that her own son was so deeply infatuated with her at such a young age. He had been fifteen for Christ's sake. He had been looking at her and obsessing over her as if he were older as if they could be in a mature relationship.

They had been fifteen. She had worried that he would make a mistake. She had been worried that Brooke would get hurt because of his mistake or that Brooke would somehow get pregnant.

She had caught him and Brooke a few different times close to having sex. Which wasn't exactly something she had wanted her own son to be doing so young let alone in her house. So, she had been a little emotional at the time when she had voted.

She had only wanted their relationship to let go its downwards spiral. The way they were going she had had a feeling that Wyatt and Brooke would have ended up in bed together within a month of her catching them together the first time and then a few months later another she had worried that another Halliwell would appear to save the world.

Only at that point in time, Brooke would have been the unknowing human carrying another Halliwell baby that was the prodigy of magic.

So sure Piper had been a little unsettled by Brooke and Wyatt's relationship so she had voted to get her to move away. At the time, she had thought it was best that Brooke and Wyatt grow up a little at least until they could actually drive say, vote maybe, or hell even drink before they got into that kind of relationship all over again.

Leo had said that Brooke was destined to be evil. The Elders had been against her and Wyatt's relationship because of it and that was why they had prohibited them from being together. They had even said she was destined to fight against the Halliwell family one day in the near future.

So, Piper had tried to get rid of Brooke just to make it easier on Wyatt. Herself too since she wouldn't have to worry about him impregnating a destined to be evil girl that the Elders despised. At the time, it had made sense to her to have Brooke disappear from their lives until the day came that they would have to fight her.

So it didn't make any sense why this would make Brooke evil. She also didn't want to be the main reason the girl was evil either. This whole Brooke mess just didn't make any sense to her.

"Piper you didn't vote for this alone." Leo told her trying to take the blame off of her.

"Still, you told me when you brought this up in the first place that she was going to be evil." Piper responded as a cold shiver passed through her body.

"Excuse me." Brooke said from the sidelines. They both looked at her and she went on, "How is it that this whole thing with my life, my destiny and yet I had no choice in the matter?"

"When do we ever?" Paige replied grimly from the sidelines.

Brooke looked over to her and nodded somehow understanding something that Wyatt hadn't gotten as he stared at the girl he had never stopped loving after all of these years.

"Good point." Brooke whispered.

"The Elders didn't think you should know what was to become of you. They thought you should go with your father willingly since it was your destiny."

"Really?" she asked. "Did any of you ever think for one second that because the Elders hated me in the first place they could have easily found the best case scenario to make me evil in the first place. Hell, it would make it that much more easier on them to get rid of me if you think about it. Since I am so evil now and you are the good guys who vanquish evil on a daily basis they probably put two and two together and set us all up."

"Dad, is that true?" Wyatt asked in anger.

He hated the Elders right now. He had never thought of it that way. The Elders.. Those pricks.. It was the perfect plot to get rid of her and none of them would have even thought twice about it until it all happened. He had hated the Elders for taking her away from him in the first place for all of these years. Now, he hated them with a passion for trying to kill her off too.

"I don't know." Leo said after a moment hesitation.

"Dad!" Wyatt cried.

"Haven't the Elders done enough to us?" Phoebe asked in anger.

"God, it's like they get some kind of sick enjoyment out of making each one of us very much unhappy and very much alone." Paige said evenly in anger.

"I just don't get it. I didn't do anything to them. I was good. I never hurt a soul and this is how they repaid me. They took my mother, they took my home, they turned my dad into a crazed power hungry lunatic, and then they were planning on having Wyatt vanquish me." she said so angrily soft. Her voice shuddered in the threat of tears, but they didn't fall. Instead, she just swallowed hard and looked hard at Leo for an answer he didn't know or want to really give.

"Leo, answer her. Why would they want to do this? Why did they put us into this fight?" Piper asked.

"Yeah, dad. Why? Especially, when she has white lighter in her."

Leo looked at his son in disbelief and confusion as Wyatt said the last words. Brooke looked down in embarrassment and then held her arms closer to her body in the cold wind blowing around them. Piper just blinked in complete confusion as she looked from her husband and back to Brooke in complete guilt.

Brooke looked over at a silhouetted Wyatt who was staring so stonily at his own father in anger as she realized why he really had comeback to her after all these years. It hadn't been because of the newspaper article about her friend. It hadn't been because he was so very worried about her and had wanted to offer his magical assistance.

It was because he had never fallen out of love with her.

She gaped at him a second and then looked away before he could catch her eye and looked over at the three on the sidelines of the beautiful flower covered yard as the smell of jasmine infiltrated her senses.

Paige had her dark hair back to its original color after what seemed to have been ages since she had been a blond the last time Brooke had checked, and she had a lot more courage as well a confidence in her that radiated around her like it would a true Elder. Of course, running a magic school on your own accord could do that to a person. Then, there was Phoebe who hadn't changed. Her dark brown hair was longer then she had ever seen it as it blew in the wind and her wise yet sad eyes stared back at her.

The last person there was Chris. God, he had grown up. He was no longer the lanky dorky kid she had made random c.d.'s for because she had felt bad about him always being grounded or else stuck at home for some insipid reason. From the looks of him now he had to have broken a few hearts on the way here.

A warm fondness came back into her as she almost smiled over at him. Chris had been like her own little brother. It was nice to see him again even if it were under these circumstances.

She looked back at Wyatt as she spoke knowing she had to tell him the truth. Well, a little bit of the truth about herself anyways. "Wyatt..." she started slowly.

"Brooke?" he asked her.

"I am.. Well I'm not a white lighter." she told him as she bit her lip and smiled shyly.

Weirdly she felt like she had years ago as she stood in this very spot in the Charmed Ones backyard with him.

She could just feel her whole shyness and timid actions coming back to her like a bad habbit as she stood there staring at him. She watched his bright blue eyes spark in confusion as his forehead wrinkled slightly. Even now, she could barely keep the urge down to stop herself for falling for him all over again like she had when she had been young and naive.

"What? What do you mean? You orbed us here." he protested as he waved his hand around to the yard they had come to for sanctuary.

"Yeah, I did." she told him knowing that he would be completely mystified by this.

"So, how is that not a white lighters power?"

"Oh, it was a white lighters power." She responded and nodded. "It was your power, Wyatt."

"What? But I didn't do that." he cried.

"She did." Leo answered for her.

"Huh?" Wyatt huffed.

"Confused party of one." Piper said.

"Speak for yourself why don't cha, Piper. I 'd like to say everyone standing out here in the yard is completely confused or out in the blue besides Leo and Brooke that is." Phoebe said as she waved at both of them in annoyment.

"So, how about one of you stop speaking in pig latin and tell us what the hell you are now." Piper rebuked.

"Well, Piper. Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, this is the part where you find out I am evil." Brooke smiled as she interrupted a readily willing to talk Leo. "Right, Leo?"

"Actually, yeah." Leo replied.


	11. Lover's In A Dangerous Time

Just being here with Wyatt brought back everything good. Everything she hadn't been apart of in years. Everything she had tried to put behind her sparked t life around her as she watched him.

For the moment, he was alive in front of her. He wasn't in any pictures she had discarded over the years of him. He was alive and he was close enough to touch. He wasn't a ghost anymore in her memory he was here with her now. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to say or what to tell him first.

She wanted to know so much. She wanted to know what had happened t him over the years. She wanted to understand why he had never fallen out of love with her. Hell, she wanted to know what it was about her that made it so hard to let go of her memory for him.

Memories spasmed through her mind as she watched him watching her.

She was there in the rain and her mother was gone. Wyatt was there and he was trying to keep her on earth with him and all she wanted to do was run away. He kept her hand in his cold one and he held her to him as if he could keep her grounded by just holding her to him. It was then the little bit of cold rushed into her heart. It was the beginning of who she had become now

She had tried to pull away from him then, but he wouldn't let her go. He held her close to him the whole time as she watched the rain fall around them. The raindrops seemed to stop on their own accord in the middle of the air. They looked like diamonds or crystals in midair. The cold wind stopped blowing as did her shivering for a moment and she felt as if she were going crazy as the world stopped for a moment around them.

Everyone else at the funeral were 10 feet away and paying their last respects. While, Wyatt and she stood behind a tree that hid them from half he people around them. They were in their own separate world there. She felt so numb and so alive in that world. The worst two spectrums of feelings grabbed a hold of her and tore around her heart as she held onto him back.

She hadn't understood then. She had never understood how one moment she was with her mother. They were happy and they were together having their whole mother daughter bonding time. Her mother was flipping pancakes for them to eat for supper just to go against the rules of dinnertime for once and she was sitting at the little cherry wood island in the center of the kitchen reading the comics.

Her mother had been happy. She had looked up too as her mother told her of the crazy day of work as she flipped the pancakes over. Everything was fine. Everything was good and then her mother had just dropped to the ground.

She hadn't known what to do. She had not expected it. For half a minute she had thought her own mother had just played dead for the hell of it. And then it had become all so real. The world changed from Technicolor to black and white all around her. She was surrounded by panic.

She had fallen to the floor beside her mother. She had checked her pulse. Her mother.. Her eyes had stared at the stove icily without any soul behind them. She hadn't known what to do.

"Mom? Please." she'd whispered.

Her mother hadn't woken up. She had panicked. She had got up to figure out what to do. Her father wasn't coming home for another hour. Time went fast around her as she had shook and then she had realized she could call for help.

She'd forgotten where the phone was then. When she had had it in her hands she had had to remember the number for help and then she had had to redial it a few times because her hands were so shaky. Then, the fire alarm had went off because the pancakes were burning.

She had been alone in that. She hadn't known what to do.

The police had came. They had asked strange questions and the ambulance had came and she had seen them put her mother in the black body bag. So surreal the world had become around her then. It was no longer in color but in black and white then. It was shadow and light. She was alive and her own mother who had been moments before wasn't.

She hadn't been able to say the words. Wyatt had come for her in the hospital where she had went in hopes her mother would just wake up and say everything was going to be all better.

He had come down the hall looking for her. His eyes had been so worried and wild with emotion when he had picked her up off the floor. He had seen her sitting on the floor by the morgue's doors holding her head in her hands and staring into space and he had picked her. He had known what had happened.

No one had ever told him. He had known before her own father.

Those were her thoughts while she had been standing at the funeral. She hadn't been able to get close to her mothers coffin and she hadn't been able to just stand there with everyone else. She had stopped dead in her tracks a few feet behind and watched as they said their lasts to her mother.

Wyatt had held her. The world had stopped around them and he had held her.

He didn't know her heart was cold then. He didn't know the Elders plan had started then. He had just held her as if she were going to melt away in the rain liek the wicked witch.

"My father's leaving here." she whispered to him as her eyes laid in their own realm of cold indifference.

"No," Wyatt whispered as he held her closer. She felt like a limp rag doll in his arms.

"Don't hold me too close, Wy. It'll only tear you apart." she whispered.

"Why are you acting like this? This isn't you, Brooke. This isn't. I'm sorry about your mom. You can't just let her death destroy you." he told her as he had held her head up to his in firm hands.

"I don't know who I am any more."

Brooke blinked out of her memory and folded her arms over her chest firmly. She wouldn't remember this now. Not when they were basically going to throw her into the fire to burn. She wouldn't burn for her craft. She wouldn't let them hurt her like they had before.

The only one there she even cared about was Wyatt. He was the reason she was here not them. When would they ever stop meddling with their lives?

She ignored the memories that kept trying to come back to her for the time being and looked at Wyatt. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know who to believe. She knew how he felt. It was like that with her everyday of her life.

"But you're not evil. Right?" Wyatt asked her with his dark blue eyes pleading with her to tell him she wasn't evil and that they all had misunderstood the situation.

"What I do could be considered not morally acceptable by the Elders. Which would mean I do evil very bad things just for the hell of it." she told him knowing she was crushing him.

"Okay. So what do you do?" Piper asked, looking for answers.

"I borrow magic." she told her with a tilt of her head in annoyment. She wanted Wyatt to know what she was. She wanted to explain to him what she was, but she didn't want the whole family to know her personal knowledge.

"Huh?" Wyatt asked.

"What is that even a power?" Paige asked.

"If it is I want it." Phoebe replied with a small laugh. "Van you imagine how much power you would..." at everyone's looks of morality issues she sobered and said. "Opps, sorry. Treading away from the evil uninhibited path. Zipping mouth and listening to everyone else talk. Sorry."

For the moment the only person that Brooke liked was Phoebe. Too bad she was repressed by everyone else around them. Phoebe actually seemed to understand that what she had was great power wise. She seemed to understand how powerful a person could be with her power and she didn't really judge her on it either. Too bad everyone else considered her evil because of it.

"Yes, it is a power. We don't even know how it was created though. Or how humans even learned how to use it." Leo told his family.

"Wow, wait. You have power that the Elders don't even know how it was created, but you are also human. Without any genes of magic in you or anything?" Paige asked.

"Yeah, completely human. Which sucks cause that means I am so fragile and killable by the Elders, but hell at least I know how to get others powers and use them for my own without any repercussions." Brooke replied with a smug smile. "Score one for humans."

Leo frowned at her as she said it but she didn't really care. She wasn't there to make him like her. She had just saved his oldest sons life he had better start to like her.

"So wait. You are saying her power just came to be?" Piper asked as she touched her head feeling a headache coming on.

"Yes." Leo told her.

"How? How is that?" Piper asked slightly ticked off that she didn't understand it at all.

"Well, that's why the Elders consider any of the Borrowers really big threats." Brooke told Piper with a shrug of her shoulders and a smile as she stretched her arms.

"The Borrowers." Phoebe asked.

"That's the name of the group of humans that someone figured out how to borrow magical beings powers." Leo told her.

"Wow, suitable name." Paige added as she pursed her lips together.

"Why are they threats?" Wyatt asked in confusion.

It wasn't everyday he found his ex girlfriend not to mention his first love. Then, after finding her dating an evil force of magic she also ended up being evil. Hell, she was human and she was doing something that the Elders didn't even know how to do. She was tapping into other magical beings powers without any repercussions and she was using them as her own. It was insane. She was more powerful then an Elder with that kind of power. No wonder they hated her and wanted her dead.

Which was exactly why he was going to be there projecting her whenever she needed it. That was if she needed it at all.

"Because we can borrow their powers, Wyatt. We can borrow anyone's powers that includes the dead, the living, or even the Elders." Brooke informed him.

"Explain this borrowing." Paige insisted.

"If I touch someone who is a magical being or am close enough to a great power then I can tap into their powers and use them as my own."

Brooke could almost feel the love dwindle in the room to fear towards her.

"Oh, " Phoebe said and gave a worried look to Paige who raised her eyebrow and exchanged the look with Piper who bit her lip.

"That's awesome." Chris said.

"No, it's not Chris. "Piper chided her youngest son.

"Isn't that more like stealing?" Paige asked.

"That's the whole line that the Elders have drawn by saying we're evil." Brooke told her. "Personally I don't believe it's stealing."

"Really?" Piper asked annoyed.

"Yeah, really, piper. Because stealing implies taking something for yourself and keeping it. I borrow powers when I need them. If I kept the powers for my own then hell that would be stealing." Brooke told her.

"The Elders seem to have come across a time when the powers were never given back." Leo replied pointedly.

"Leo, a person died that had magic. They passed their powers to the nearest person to them. That is so not stealing." Brooke replied.

"Who did they give their powers to?" Leo interrogated.

"I don't know. Perhaps you should figure it out since you are an all-knowing Elder. That is if it even happened and what we heard isn't just a rumor." Brooke told him as she rolled her eyes.

"Well, do you guys fight for the good side?" Wyatt interrupted their small battle.

"Um.. Well we fight to survive." she told him.

"Not a good enough answer." Piper interjected.

"We do what we want. How's that for you?" Brooke asked. "We survive. We don't go out and help people daily just to risk our lives for the good of others .We kill our enemies as do you and we survive. Sorry if in the Elders terms we're evil."

"Okay." Phoebe said again filling the unnatural silence.

"You said 'we'? who's we?" Paige asked.

Brooke stared at them each individually. The Power of Three. Who would have thought the oldest one would have created one of the most powerful evil forces in the world? Who would have thought the middle sister went towards the dark side? Who would have thought that Paige was the brains of the group?

"Come on now. We already know your power. You said 'we' not us. You brought this on yourself. And we already know abut the Borrowers to a point." Paige tried to point out.

"I did. I should have orbed somewhere else." Brooke told them.

"Oh, come on. You know who we are obviously. Why can't we find out about you?" Piper asked.

"Because I am not the only one affected by my choice of words." Brooke told her.

"Okay, we get the loyalty bit. But you orbed here for a reason. Why don't you let us help you out since we're the Charmed Ones. Like Wyatt said you're friend is dead and you need help." Phoebe tried.

Nice try, Brooke thought with a twisted frown on her face.

"She was murdered there's a difference between dead and murdered." Brooke told them as she pressed her hands onto her hips.

"Well, okay. You help us and we help you." Piper added her voice to the bandwagon.

Brooke looked around he yard in surprise. Help? She hadn't really come here for help. She had come her to bring Wyatt to safety. She hadn't wanted their help . All they wanted was information that she wasn't willing to give them.

"Well obviously because you haven't spoken up yet you are either too egotistical to admit you need help or else you are still considering." Piper said.

"I'd say both." Paige murmured.

"And how do you guys expect her to trust us if you make fun of her?" Wyatt asked annoyed at his whole family.

"Look at it this way.. Does she have a choice?" Phoebe asked him.

"I do." Brooke told her. "You unfortunately don't."

"How's that?" Leo asked, instantly on defense for an incoming attack of Borrowers or else for her to use his powers against him.

"It just means you don't." Brooke told him.

"What?" Piper asked in confusion as she pushed her hair out of her face in impatience.

"Wyatt came after me at the worst possible moment."

"So?" Phoebe asked as she let one of her hands drop to her hip.

"So? So, my very angry, vengeful dark lighter boyfriend is now out to kill him." Brooke informed them in a patronizing voice.

"What?" Wyatt asked. "But I.."

"I know you didn't mean to. However, you're a good guy and it looks like you kidnapped me to him so by now he's out for blood." Brooke quickly told Wyatt to catch him up to the fact that his life was in danger now.

"So wait. How does it not seem like a conspiracy since you orbed both of you here so your evil ex could come after you both and then kill us all?" Paige asked waving her hands at the yard and the family. "We're like sitting ducks."

Brooke didn't look at Paige when she spoke. All Paige's facial expressions had slowly grown old on her as she looked straight at Wyatt. His face fell as her realized he was in for trouble. She watched him intensely and never let her eyes drop from his in a secret understanding of danger as well as worry.

"How about the part that I am still here collaboration with you instead of going back to him? Or the part where I am staying here to make sure he doesn't come after you!"

"Still it's just a little bit shady." Phoebe replied frowning.

"Would it be more shady in hell once he kills you?" Brooke asked as she broke her eyes away from Wyatt's stormy blue eyes to search the Charmed Ones.


	12. Lucky You

It's been awhile. I had another idea sparked after watching the cowboy beebop movie. that should come out soon....

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"Okay, on that note." Piper said in the silence with a look at her husband. "Phoebe, Paige, in the kitchen. We need to have a little pow wow. Leo you need to talk to your son. Brooke, you stay out here and try not to get into any trouble."

Piper still couldn't believe that the girl standing before her had been the sweet, incredibly shy girl Wyatt had been in love with before. She used to be so shy and now.. Well, now she was evil and stolen okay 'borrowed' people's powers in Brooke's terminology without any care in the world.

She was still human too. She had a power humans weren't supposed to even posses and a power that the Elders didn't even know how it was created.

And to top it off, Piper herself had been the tie breaker into changing her evil. How wonderful was it to have that on your conscience! Especially, when her son had never gotten over the girl in the first place.

Brooke watched Piper as she drilled the family into the motions and looked around with a brief smile. She had to give Piper the benefit of the doubt. She sure had seemed surprised to find out she was responsible for who Brooke had become. Of course, she didn't blame Piper for it at all. She liked herself better this way. No longer was she some naÀ5?Àve pushover. Now, she had the power to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. Hell, she could take care of herself in the supernatural world, too.

Brooke looked at Piper with raised eyebrows and smiled as she replied to Piper's little quip. "Me? Trouble? Never."

Piper quickly pulled her two younger sisters into the warm house and shut the door to the solarium behind her. The finality of the situation broke home over Leo as he turned to his son and nodded for him to follow him away from Brooke and the safety of the backyard. Wyatt slowly followed his father as Leo walked down towards the front yard and down the stone steps while Chris laid behind in the shadows.

Brooke just looked down and sighed as she felt the day come back to her. She was shivering badly now. The cold wind was becoming more harsh and her body was still going through the process of keeping her alive after her last little stunt with death. She had a feeling she was feeling the results of her brush with death through hypothermia too. She took a moment and then sat on the white patio lounge chair in order to give herself a little break.

Chris stayed outside in the yard with her. He was still drawn between going into the house and seeing what his mother was really saying in there in private, or staying outside with her. The fact that he lived with his mother and knew her well enough to know she was going through her full blown circuit of paranoia inside while the girl who had stolen Wyatt's heart as well as most of his livelihood if that was even the right term for it was outside and he was just a little too curious about her.

It had been years and now here Brooke was sitting right there in front of him. He had never admitted it to anyone in the family but he had had a small crush on her once before So, now he couldn't help but feel it slowly come back over him again as he looked at her.

She had been so nice to him. Wyatt's other friends never even gave him the time of day, but she had. He had always been the pesky, annoying little brother that tagged along to Wyatt's other friends but Brooke had gladly accepted him.

Brooke had been nice to him. She had hung out with him. She had made him dozens of c.d.'s just for the hell of it. He had to like her for being nice to him. It had been nice for once to be recognized as actually existing.

She had changed though. Hell, he may not even have thought it was her if he had saw her on the street. Her chestnut brown hair was longer now and it was full of unruly curls that she had never had before. She had always had straight short hair that had made her look like a chic china doll. Now, she looked like one of the Victoria Secret models or something with the long hair.

Her eyes which had always been a light topaz that had been filled with kindness were now smoky and filled with secrets. Hell, even the way she carried herself now. She had used to always have a nervous energy when it came to her hands, and now she had stood before some of the most powerful beings of good on the earth and she had looked straight in their eyes with more confidence then he had ever seen out of her. She had changed a lot in the small amount of time she had been away.

And it all had been because of his own mother. It was just a little too weird to know that fact. He could just feel a headache coming on as he watched her.

Even what she was wearing now seemed different. Instead of her regular jeans and a tank top, she wore a long black skirt that had small dark blood red designs of fire on the bottom hem of it along with her red tank top that was now almost a maroon color from the evident brush with water that she'd had. Her clothes were even plastered to her body from whatever water incident that she and Wyatt had been apart of.

Chris didn't understand how she had gotten so wet. He wanted to know though. It didn't make any sense at all. It hadn't rained all day. Not here anyway. But here she was completely drenched and shaking in the cold.

Why hadn't Wyatt saw she was cold? Why hadn't he given her some clothes?

Of course, there was the other question. Wyatt had left the house fully clothed and came back shirtless and with a drenched girl.

"Brooke?" he called out to her in the dark as his voice cracked a bit.

She was on her feet in a second. She hadn't seen him in the dark. He had to admit he felt stupid as she searched for him. He finally came out of the dark shadows that had been hiding him from sight in order to stop her search for the voice.

Brooke looked at him for a moment and then she gave a small squeal that seemed so like her from the olden days and not at all like something an evil demonic force would give.

She instantly ran over to him and gave him a big bear hug that developed him. Then she leaned back and look at him. "Chris! I can't believe that's you. You've changed so much."

Chris blushed in embarrassment and looked around with a small smile.

"Oh, don't even get all embarrassed on me. You're hot!" she told him as she broke away from the hug and beamed at him.

He always wanted to hear that from her. This was almost a perfect moment in time. The girl he had had the hots for a few years was back in his life looking like a model and telling him- the younger brother of the almighty twice-blessed- that he was hot. He could die happily now. Instead, he decided to keep his cool.

"I.. Uh.. You too." he said stupidly then after wanting to bang his head into a tree about a thousand times before he dug himself a grave.

"Thanks. Wow. Time changes everybody doesn't.. wow." she repeated and smiled and then she ruffled his brown hair as if on impulse.

As always, this whole hair ruffling thing bothered him slightly. A hot girl should not ruffle a guys hair. It just wasn't right. Again, he was being put in his place as the younger brother.

Chris decided to pick a burial plot now as his shoulders shrank a little in shame. He had almost believed that he was finally getting somewhere with a girl that was beyond awesome. Now, here he was back at square one.

"Have you missed me?" she asked him as she wrapped an arm around his shrinking shoulders and leaned her head on his chest warmly since he was so tall now and she could do that.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. And Wyatt...."he said as he broke off.

He had saw the flicker of interest. It was still there. She still cared about Wyatt no matter what act she may drudge up. That was why she was here and if his own parents couldn't see it then he could.

There still was a little bit of the old Brooke in her. If only they could save it in a bottle and bring her back fully.

"And Wyatt?" she asked, curiously as her topaz eyes darkened to a gold.

"Well, he took it the worst when you left. I mean come on. Who has their parents restrict you from the love of your life because they are going to become evil in the near future?" Chris spouted out. "Well, besides out family anyways."

Brooke stiffened beside him at the mention of her destiny. He felt stupid after he had spoke and bit his lip as he watched her. It only took a second for her to pull away from him after he had drudged up the past and now she looked over the yard with an expressionless mask over her face.

"I guess we all have the privilege of living that double life." she said, cryptically and finally turned her deep golden eyes towards his.


	13. Almost Getting Away With Murder

Piper went instantly over to the white fridge that was covered in family pictures from over the years of all the big events in her children's lives and got a big pack of ice that she had on hand in a ready made zip lock baggie in case one of these insane situations ended up happening. She tried not to let the pressure of the situation show to her sisters since she had to be strong as well as level minded for everyone at the moment. She felt like her brain was going to implode or something after all of the information she had just received.

This was like the nightmare day from hell or something. She had thought that worrying about Wyatt and finding out where he had been after all this time... if they had even found out where he had been would've been bad. Now that she knew where he was she still felt completely in the dark

Brooke just appearing out of no where with Wyatt had also brought up a few large questions that concerned the past. He had found Brooke so easily. It was almost as if he knew where she was. He shouldn't know that though.

He shouldn't because of the whole affair with the Elders where they had prohibited him from ever seeing her again. Piper had a feeling he had went against the Elders a few more times then she had expected.

Sure, when he had initially been forbidden from ever seeing Brooke again Piper had completely understood that he had had to see her for one last time. It was a goodbye meeting. Everyone deserved to say their goodbyes.

But now... she wouldn't have doubted if all those times he had just been late coming home from somewhere or a few of those times when he had been over a friend's house he had instead seen her. It made sense. How else would he know where she was? It wasn't like they exchanged letters and the newspaper hadn't said anything about the address to the house that her friend had been murdered in.

He had just found her out of the blue? Right. She wasn't that idiotic.

Then, there was the whole fact and point that her friend was brutally murdered in the house at the same time that Brooke had been there. That seemed a little too easy. It seemed like Brooke was either the reason that her friend had been murdered or else she had done it herself. Piper wished that Wyatt hadn't just jumped into this whole thing. Especially when certain pieces just didn't add up.

Then, they all were the ones that had given her this fate. She understood why Brooke hated the Elders because of it. Well, Piper even could understand why Brooke would hate her even. She had been the reason that Wyatt and Brooke's ongoing romance had stopped abruptly. She was the reason supposedly of why Brooke was evil now.

That was a tough one to shoulder and she was trying not to think too much about it.

"Piper, you okay, honey?" Phoebe asked as she pulled up a stool to the island in the middle of the kitchen.

"No, I'm not okay. My son just brought home his evil ex . Who in most cases would just be a some form of annoying past girlfriend but in our lives it means she's actually evil without morals and Wyatt's seemingly vengeful ex. Who, I don't really trust, by the way, and I am to blame for her being that way. Then, her boyfriend is a dark lighter who happened to have seen her with Wyatt a white lighter. Who, at this moment, could be planning all of our demise's, and I really don't know who's side Brooke will be on when he does decided to show up. Did I mention I don't trust her?" Piper replied as she finally ran out of hot air and took a bit gulp in.

"Sweetie, it's not your fault." Paige replied as she also grabbed a stool and made Piper sit in it before she herself gave her a small, comforting hug. "This is the Elders fault if it's anybody's"

"If what she said is even true." Phoebe spoke up.

"You guys, you heard Leo. It was my vote that made her evil."

"Yeah, well. He didn't tell you the circumstances. So, by my count, you weren't all to blame." Paige told her sister sympathetically.

"Alright, I can suffer with the blame later. What I am more worried about right now is Brooke." Piper told her sisters as she leaned forward onto the island.

"I second that." Phoebe agreed.

"I third that." Paige added.

"So, what do we do?" Phoebe asked.

"Well, I know one thing for sure. This whole story about her friend. We seriously need to more about it. Like how her friend died and maybe why if she is willing to tell us that." Piper said.

"Hell, it would help if we knew who's side she was on." Phoebe admitted.

"Yeah, well we'll save that for a little later." Piper told her sister.

"What we need now is to find out who her boyfriend is." Paige told them.

"Good thinking, Paige. Always on your feet," Phoebe told her sister giving her a small nudge.

"Yeah, right. I just want to vanquish his evil butt before he gets anywhere near my nephews." Paige replied. "He could have a white lighter hay day if he wanted to."

"Do you think she will be willing to rat out her boyfriend?" Phoebe asked.

"Well, if she doesn't then she can't seriously stay here." Piper declared.

"Plus, if she doesn't then Wyatt will also know who's side she is playing for. Then he will be able to fully get over her." Paige told them.

"You don't think he's ever gotten over her?" Phoebe asked.

"No, I don't. Which isn't exactly in our favor right now with him making it all doe eyed and cupid like around here." Paige answered with an annoyed face.

"How romantic." Phoebe declared with a few giggles. "Our little nephew in love with the dark side. God, he takes after me."

"I hope not." Piper said. "the last thing I need is to go gray early and worry all hours of the night about where he is."

"Oh, Piper. It's already begun." Phoebe giggled. "It all started with him rekindling his lost, may I add, evil love interest. Next, he destroys her new lover boy and then after that the uncontrollable orbing at all hours of the night as he stays with his true love. Oh, how I miss high school."

"What are you talking about , sis? You were born that way. High school was just when you got your license and were able to drive yourself to your little flings." Piper chided.

"Oh, yeah. Piper, do your remember that time when I had the car and there was beer.."

A sharp and pointed cough entered the air of nostalgia falling over Phoebe and Piper. They both looked over at Paige and felt slightly rude. They had the memories of childhood and whatnot with each other, but Paige didn't. She had been adopted and she had been the only child in that family. If anything she was always left out whenever a moment of the past came up just because she had barely met any members of her natural family outside of their deaths of course.

"Oh, sorry, sweetie. I didn't mean to leave you out." Phoebe apologized.

"Yeah, I know. It's not your fault mom had me adopted. It's just.. " Paige let her statement wander as her brown eyes gazed out the window.

"It's just," Piper asked as she followed her sisters gaze to the backyard.

They all looked forward to see Chris and Brooke outside. She had her arm slung around his waist and was laughing with him. She didn't look at all evil. She looked like the nice girl next door that you wanted your son to fall for. She looked like the girl they all had first met and teased Wyatt for being in love with.

It didn't help matters that she and Chris were out there together. They looked like they were going over old times and having a lot of fun with it. Piper almost felt bad for voting against Brooke and making the girl leave in the first place as she saw how well Chris was with her. It had been a long time since she had seen his old smiles.

"Oh, this isn't good." Phoebe stated.

"Especially, if she is still evil." Paige agreed as they looked at Piper for a final decision.

Her eyes wandered to Chris and she decided she would leave it up to her children for once to figure this out. She had screwed it up the first time. She had made Brooke leave her home and go onto the evil side. So, now she was going to just play devil's advocate to see whether Brooke.. well old non-evil Brooke was an illusion or not.

"I think we'll give her a chance. But keep your eyes on her. I'm not fully trusting her yet." Piper told them.

The sisters three nodded and looked back out into the backyard to where Chris and Brooke had finally decided to sit on the old lawn chairs. They gazed up at the sky talking as Piper nodded to herself. If Brooke was the same girl Wyatt had fallen for then everything would work out in the end and they would help her find her friend's murderer. If she wasn't and she was still evil then she would end up betraying herself sooner or later.

The evil ones always did.


	14. The Act Of Being Careful

Wyatt felt the impending doom wash over him as he followed his Elder father away from the light of his house. Right at that moment, he would have rather been with his mother getting yelled at and then grounded or something. Anything would be better right now then following his dad to the street and being talked to death.

Don't get him wrong. He loved his dad. He just hated it when it came down to himself and his father having a heart to heart.

Wyatt didn't like to do the whole talking about emotions things like his dad did. It just wasn't right. He liked doing things, and he liked figuring stuff out better. He had never been the one to go to his father and tell him all his earthly troubles. Basically, one cause his father had his own troubles and two he just didn't want to hear his father's passive aggressive bs.

"Dad, can we not and say we did?" Wyatt asked as they both stepped off the dark green lush lawn and onto the crumbling gray sidewalk.

Wherever they were going, Leo sure was in the mood to walk somewhere else. Wyatt didn't want to though. He just wanted to stay close to home. He had so may questions and answers that he needed to get from Brooke that it was disgusting. Of course, he couldn't easily do that when his father was pulling him away to walking down the long hill away from Brooke instead of letting him just stay and be happy for once with her.

You had to love San Francisco. It seemed like everything was either a downhill or uphill struggle. The battle with gravity let alone the traveling up hill part sucked.

The fact that his father hadn't just chosen to orb somewhere only meant this was going to be longer. It was like his father was trying to screw him over.

Here he was finally reunited with the girl he had never ever been able to get over and his had father decided to have a little heart to heart chat with him the same night. How nice. How beautiful. Where was his father when he actually wanted to talk? Oh, out helping the world.

Leo glanced over at his son. He knew that Wyatt wanted to be anywhere but here with him. He knew that the moment that he said 'go' Wyatt would literally pouf out to be closer to Brooke. Which worried him. Yet, in the same rite, he knew that he had once been in his son's shoes and he just wanted to make sure Wyatt truly knew what he was getting himself into, and that he just wasn't going along with it hormonally.

"No, we can't, Wyatt. Whether you like it or not that girl has brought with her consequences that you will have to face." Leo told his son.

He hated having to be in this position. He hated having to say 'oh, you can love that girl, but the one you actually do have feelings for you can't be with.' He hated that.

He loved knowing that his family was built to save the world and that they did so so gracefully, but then he hated having to tell his own son that he couldn't be with someone he knew loved because it may effect the fate of the world.

He had seen it the moment that Wyatt had finally introduced her to them. The look. He had had the same look when he had been falling in love with Piper. He had had the same problems too.

First, he fell for her, but then he couldn't be with her. The Elders had prohibited any white lighters from actually marrying any of their charges. He had loved Piper so much though. He had been willing to go against them. Hell, he had clipped his wings for awhile because he had stopped her from dying when she had been supposed to.

He had went against the Elders and had fallen for Piper. They had even tried to have a secret wedding that the Elders couldn't break them apart with, but the Elders had somehow found out about. Later, Leo had decided it was probably through Cole, but he had never been able to be sure. Then, Piper had done or said something that had changed the Elders minds. For once the Elders had seen that something in her that had made him fall for her from the first moment he had seen her.

Then, they had finally finally finally he couldn't even emphasis finally enough, been able to be married.

So, when Wyatt had brought Brooke home to introduce her to them Leo had seen that very same look he had had for Piper. Then, the Elders had came once Wyatt and Brooke were steadily dating and told them of her great future of being evil. So, he had to think fast.

Leo had known that Brooke was good. He had seen it. The Elders wouldn't listen to him though. Then, they had made him bring Wyatt up to them so they could explain to him what she would become. Wyatt had resisted it the whole time. Leo knew that was when he had started to hate the Elders. Leo had too when they had restricted him from Piper.

The hardest thing he had had to do was watch Wyatt after that. The Elders had watched him too and they had been furious with him for leaving their little pow wow up the air just to see her. Leo had, of course, defended his son. He had brought up the point that if you were to lose one of the loves of your lives you should at least be able to say goodbye the right way.

The Elders had resisted him at first, but given him that.

The Elders. Sometimes Leo didn't even know how they could be so powerful when none of them seemed to have any sort of caring towards love or humans as it was.

So, Wyatt had gotten away with is goodbye. But the Elders had watched him closely after that and had seen for themselves that it hadn't been a goodbye. Wyatt had kept seeing her despite what Piper and Leo had told him. So the Elders had decided to do something drastic to start the chain of events of having Brooke leave.

They had killed her mother.

Leo had never agreed to that. He didn't known why killing someone needed to be done. He didn't see how this could be so a big a deal. He had thought that if they could just prevent Brooke from becoming evil in the first place then they would all be fine. The Elders had been against that though. They had reverted back to thinking of him as just some white lighter scum on the bottom of their sky clad shoes and had dismissed him.

So, they had done it. Then, Brooke's father had decided to leave. He had a plan to move away and Leo had understood the Elders reasoning for killing her mother then. Her mother was the reason they were sill in San Francisco and with her gone then Brooke's father would chose to move and start the destiny that was waiting for her. So, Brooke had moved away.

The Elders had let the matter drop, had assured Leo there would be other girls for Wyatt, and then they had went back to their business. Leo hadn't though. He had watched his son start to deteriorate for awhile. The Wyatt he had known had slowly disappeared. He had been nothing like the one he had known.

He had stopped eating for awhile. He had even become more distant and spacey as if he had to be somewhere else. For awhile, he hadn't even talked to Piper or Leo. Which Leo knew had hurt Piper.

She had blamed herself for everything. She had been the swing vote. She had only voted in order to save Wyatt from being in love with someone evil and then having to vanquish them himself. She had never meant for Brooke's mother to die in the process.

Piper had had to vanquish people she had loved that had turned evil before, and so had her sisters, and she had hoped she could save her children from it. But it hadn't worked that well.

Leo had watched his son carefully then. The Elders had given him free leave since they knew this would be tough on Wyatt. Like the factor that it was their faults in the first place had nothing to do with them.

So he had. Then, he had started to see a few changes.

Wyatt had started to eat a little more. He had actually smiled at some jokes that Chris had thrown out there. Hell, he had even started to trash talk the Elders instead of being quiet all the time.

So, when Leo had a feeling Wyatt was doing something he shouldn't he had started to find out he was right. Leo had hung out in Wyatt's room for awhile trying to see what he could come up with. He had found dirty clothes, a few magazines his mother would kill him for owning, and pictures of her.

It had been almost like a shrine in the one corner of his room dedicated to Brooke.

So, when Wyatt had came into the room Leo had turned himself invisible to find out what really was going on. He then had found Wyatt cast a spell that had instantly thrown him unconscious. The big part though wasn't the fact that his son was unconscious but that he was saying that spell in order to go into Brooke's dream to see her.

It had been a tricky concept. He wasn't really seeing Brooke. All he was doing was talking to her or communing with her through her dreams. So, Leo had let it go.

He hadn't wanted to see his son lose the love of his life in the first place. So, the next time that Wyatt had done the same thing he had cast a protection spell over him. A protection spell that would cover his presence from being any where near Brooke's.

"Look, I have faced the consequences. You hate and mom hates and the Elders hated her, but I love her. There's no way I am just going to stand by and wait for some lunatic to come and kill her like he did her friend. No way, so don't even try to talk me out of this."

Leo paused for a moment and nodded. "I'm not."

"What? Really? Wait is this some Elder trick or something?" Wyatt asked as he walked in front of his father to block his path and they both stopped.

"No, it's not. Wyatt, when I found out about her I didn't want her to hurt you. I thought that keeping you away from her and her future would be safer for you. Then I saw you. I saw how you were without her and how much it hurt you. Your mother and I lost you the night we agreed with the Elders to start her destiny. And after all this time I've realized how much of a hypocrite I am." Leo told his son.

"What? Back up a second. I don't think I heard you right."

"Your mother and I were in the same position once. Well, she wasn't going to turn evil but we were basically in the same position. The Elders restricted us and we fought them. That's what happened with you. I was just... caught up in trying to save you from evil that I made the wrong choice."

"You did, did you?" Wyatt gaped.

"Yes, I did. Now, I am not saying that you still shouldn't be careful around her. I am saying that if you love her then I'll stand by you this time. However, you have to watch your back. She's evil now. She isn't exactly your former girlfriend so try to be cautious around since you don't know who's side she really is playing for. The last thing I want is to lose my son to evil."

"Alright," Wyatt replied as he ran his hand through his unruly mesh of curled hair as it all came over him.

"As long as we're on the same page."

"Definitely. Wow, thanks dad. I thought this was going to be an ongoing babbling sessions on feelings. Boy, was I wrong. Thanks." Wyatt replied with an old smile on his lips.

He went to orb home but Leo interrupted him, "Just be careful."

"When am I not, dad?" Wyatt replied and then orbed.

Leo had to admit never.


	15. Reunited For Now

Brooke raised her clear topaz colored eyes to find Wyatt hovering over where she was sitting in lawn chairs with Chris. It was weird to see him again. It was like a dream or maybe an illusion and one minute she would wakeup from it. She got up slowly from the blue plastic and steel lounge chair that she had resting in beside Chris and stood beside Wyatt.

There was a small hidden moment of something. She couldn't quite make out the emotion because it passed through them and became other emotions that were unnamable at the moment as they stared into each other's eyes. It wasn't every day you saw your ex, found out your lover had killed your best friend, and that you were now planning to switch sides midway through the game.

It had been a long day.

The night would be worse.

She shivered tiredly as she broke the gaze she held with Wyatt's crystal clear blue eyes and looked up at the clear dark raven black sky. She looked for an answer up there that she knew wasn't available to her, but she looked never the less. Brooke wrapped her arms tightly around herself in the cold slight breeze that was coming in from the north.

A storm was coming. She could feel it as she looked for some remnant of a cloud in the clear sky over head. This storm wasn't a regular storm. This was a magical storm and it was going to be used to its fullest advantage.

Her father wasn't going to let her change sides after all the progress they had made. Conrad wasn't going to let her be with a Charmed Ones son. She belonged to him. If he couldn't change her mind back when he came after her soon then he would kill her just for changing sides. He was a dark lighter after all. Death was his gift.

"Excuse me, Chris." she said softly.

"Chris," Wyatt spoke suddenly trying to say something to his little brother but he couldn't explain anything at the present moment. His mind kept drawing a blank. His mind just kept playing over and over again the fact that Brooke was there with him and he wasn't hallucinating.

"Yeah, yeah. Little brother leave us alone bit. I get it." Chris replied and got up to go. "Wy, you want like a jacket or something? Brooke?"

"Oh, yeah. Sure." she replied with a dazed expression written over her face for a moment as she realized she was still wet.

"I'm good." Wyatt replied.

Chris looked at his brother and rolled his eyes. "Whatever, if you want to be the human blow dryer. You do that."

"Chris," Wyatt said again. His eyes had still not left Brooke's since the moment she had stood up beside him.

"Gone." Chris replied and orbed inside the Manor to be away from the reunited couple.

Brooke bit her lip for a moment and looked around. Wyatt stood in the silence too then. There was electricity in the air between them. She shivered in the sudden breeze flowing through the air around them.

It starting raining softly down on them as she did. She looked up at the sky as her softened expression dissolved. Her face hardened and became fathomless as he watched her resolve. He didn't know what that meant but he knew it was probably not good for him to lose the good soft human half of her so early in the game.

He quickly remembered what he was supposed to do. She was freezing. It didn't help that it was sprinkling lightly around them. He instantly stepped forward towards her as he regained her attention and then he touched her hand softly. He could use his powers to warm her and even to get her clothes to dry. It didn't matter that it was raining around them at the moment. All he had to do was touch her hand and they wouldn't even be affected by the world around them.

She took a small step back in reflex as he did. Why, he didn't know. He wondered what she expected him to do. He wondered if she thought he was going to hurt her after everything. He hoped she had a little more confidence in him then that.

"Just stand still for a second." he told her.

She nodded in hesitation and then she closed her hand over his. He used his powers then. His shield came up instantly and wrapped them in a cool blue layer of light. In seconds, she was dry. A soft smile played on the edges of her lips as he watched her. It was an old smile he had loved that was haunting her lips as she glanced up at him from inspecting her dry clothes.

"Better?" he asked, hopefully.

She looked into his blue eyes. He hadn't changed much she realized as she continued to bite her lip. She nodded and swallowed hard. She felt shy again. She almost felt awkward with him again as if she had no experience dealing with boys before or something.

"I'm sorry about my parents. " Wyatt apologized lightly. "My mom didn't mean to make you this way. My dad.. Well. He has to follow the Elders."

Brooke heard the hard tense sarcasm enveloping his statement about the Elders as she nodded at him and the world around them. She wasn't for one moment going to forget how he felt about them. She had played the evil side a little too long to not know when there was an open opportunity to disrupt and manipulate a person.

"Excuses, excuses." she replied lightly as her eyes watched a few stars in the dark black sky and she filed the Elder factor away.

"I can't help being related." he told her with a rare smile that touched his eyes immediately.

"It seems no one can help who they really are." she replied vaguely.

"Fate's a bitch."

She nodded. She didn't know what to say. She didn't know what it was like to be good. She hadn't ever cared to be. She didn't want to tread on dangerous waters and she didn't know whether she should stay there with him any longer.

What she did know for sure was that she wasn't going to be able to stay in this little hiatus for long. She could feel Conrad on the outer edges of her consciousness. He was looking for her. He was her dark lighter. Besides that, the Halliwell house was like a beckon for anything evil to try to destroy it. Everyone knew where it was and who lived in it.

It was only a matter of time before he realized where she was for sure and came after her.


End file.
